As the checkered flag was being waved in Bahrain on Sunday night, Red Bull‘s Daniel Ricciardo managed to coast past the finish line, despite his engine having had enough.
The Aussie driver still managed to get his well-earned points by finishing P6, but right now both him and his team have to be extremely careful with their next power unit.
To recap what happened to his other ones, he lost one during practice in Australia during the season-opener and then another one in China. Now having lost a third one, he’ll have to move on to his final spare.
“All the [post-race] fireworks went off and the engine obviously wanted to join in,” joked Christian Horner. But if something happens in Barcelona or in any of the remaining races, the team will pay dearly if they’ll end up having to use a fifth unit before the an executive decision allowing drivers to use 5 engines gets finalized.
Even so, with Renault engines proving to be particularly unreliable this year, Red Bull should be weary of how they manage their engines from now on.
Currently, Red Bull are hanging onto fourth place in the constructor standings, only 4 points ahead of Sauber. As for the driver standings, Ricciardo is 7th, 11 points behind Valtteri Bottas and 5 points ahead of Felipe Nasr.
story references: Autosport
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