Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, Circuit of the Americas, 2018

Ricciardo had “exactly the same failure as Bahrain” – Horner

2018 United States Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

The power unit fault which put Daniel Ricciardo out of the United States Grand Prix was exactly the same as the one he suffered in Bahrain, according to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.

“The hairpin he was coming out of he had exactly the same failure as in Bahrain earlier in the year,” Horner explained. “It looks a major issue in the energy store, and it just takes all power out to the power unit.”

Ricciardo shouldn’t have to take a penalty as a result of the failure, said Horner. “We’ve got another energy store within the allocation without having to take a penalty and the Renault guys in the garage have obviously apologised which we appreciate but the frustration is for Daniel.”

Following the race Ricciardo punched a hole in a wall at Red Bull. Horner said it was clear the string of glitches have frustrated Ricciardo.

“Obviously there must be frustrations within him. He knows it’s not the team’s issue, he knows it’s nothing that we’ve done.

“I think he can’t get his head around why it keeps happening to him. Whether it’s a throttle linkage in Japan, a battery here, it’s hugely frustrating for him.”

Red Bull will part company with Ricciardo, who is moving to the Renault works team, in three races’ time.

“From a team point of view all we want to do is finish the year on a high with him and have the chance to celebrate the time he’s been with us,” said Horner. “But it’s just unfortunate these things keep happening to him.”

@HazelSouthwell contributed to this article.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2018 F1 season

Browse all 2018 F1 season articles

68 comments on “Ricciardo had “exactly the same failure as Bahrain” – Horner”

  1. Really feel for him. Het could/would be right in the fight with Kimi, Max and Lewis. How great would that have been. If things didn’t work out, he still would be in the mix with Vettel and Bottas yesterday.

    1. @matthijs
      Its his sevent DNF this season. More than anybody else on the grid. Such a shame.

      1. @webtel: Almost seems like Christian has a remote kill switch for Danny’s car. Accidental kill switch, sure…but since Riccardo didn’t sign with the Spice Boys, an awful lot of coincidences…

        /tinfoil

        1. @jimmi-cynic
          Well, conspiracies add a lot of spice no doubt. RBR are known to punish with their methods (demoting Kvyat). There are three more races to go–if Daniel has a DNF in atleast 2 of them, i am subscribing to your ‘kill switch’ theory.

          1. /facepalm

          2. In real Michel Vaillant style I can attribute to a conspiracy theory. Suppose that Renault is trying to sabotage the car of Max. But when the parts arrive at RedBull, out of precaution they switch the boxes, so Daniel gets the parts destined for Max and vice versa! And at Renault they are still puzzled why their sabotage doesn’t work….

          3. Actually Renault is givig RIC next years parts so he will get use to them a little early.

        2. @RageF1
          I laughed so hard at this, hahahaha

        3. It’s not a “conspiracy theory,” it’s “independent speculative analysis.” ;-)

  2. Must be doubly frustrating to have these issues knowing they may well continue next year.

    1. As Renault themselves and mcLaren do not appear to have these problems i doubt that.

      1. It’s a Renault issue. Renault are the ones in the article apologising for the issue. The Renault F1 team has had terrible reliability this year. As has McLaren. So, seriously?

        1. It has been said more than once that Renault’s engine is quite “squeezed” in Red Bulls so the reliability problems affecting the PU only on this client car can be related to that @hahostolze

          1. @m-bagattini Sure, I don’t rule that out. But:

            @gechichan they both have terrible reliabilty. Hulk has retired five times. All engine related. Even if the Renault car is more fitted to the Renault engine, and even if they don’t push it as hard, that’s bad.

          2. @m-bagattini – in contrast, Max has had 4 retirements, of which only one was down to the PU. I’m not saying it’s the driver, but if it was an engine packaging issue, we’d have seen it a little more even between the two.

          3. @phylyp My feeling, but I have to check the data, is that since Ricciardo announced his move to Renault he has been moved to second driver status, which is understandable. I suppose the good stuff is now always on Max’s car.

          4. @m-bagattini – interesting :-). Definitely possible, as their WCC is not threatened. And for sure Ricciardo is excluded from some of the deeper technical sessions. But I’m not sure if RBR can really influence whether he gets the worse of the 2 PUs. Honestly, it’s equally likely that RBR are receiving the worst 2 PUs in a manufacturing batch, with their defection to Honda now announced.

          5. @phylyp I believe the PUs and the components are randomly allocated iirc.

          6. I suppose the good stuff is now always on Max’s car.

            There is little to no ‘good stuff’ related to the PU which the team have an impact on, @m-bagattini.
            The PU’s are allocated by FIA from a pool, and don’t expect any major packaging changes so late in the season.

          7. The PU’s are allocated by FIA from a pool

            @coldfly @spoutnik – I didn’t know that, thanks for clearing it up.

          8. @hahostolze

            Of the 5 retirements Hülkenberg has had, Baku, Spain and Spa were not mechanical (he crashed at Baku, got Grosjean’d at Spain and Grosjean’d half the field at Spa). The only mechanical retirements were at Austria and Japan.

            In the same team, Sainz has had only 1 retirement, at Britain, and that was due to a crash. If I remember correctly he had a MGU-K failure (same as Ricciardo in Monaco) at France, which cost him position to Magnussen and Bottas.

            Furthermore, when it comes to grid penalties due to power unit components, Sainz has taken them once at Belgium, and Hülkenberg has taken 2 (1 at Belgium, then another one at Italy since he already had a grid penalty).

            Other than Hülkenberg at Spain (which had a fuel pressure issue, which I don’t think can be counted as a power unit issue), the Renault team hasn’t had any power unit trouble during qualifying.

            And when compared to his teammate, Ricciardo’s reliability seems worse. During qualifying, Ricciardo had a power unit failure at Japan. Verstappen had some issues at Singapore which might have costed him the pole.

            As for retirements during the race, Ricciardo has had mechanical retirements at Bahrain (battery), Austria (exhaust), Germany (power loss), Italy (clutch) and USa (battery). Plus 2 retirements due to crashes (Baku and Belgium). And the MGU-K failure at Monaco which was lucky in a way and would have been a retirement in any other track. Verstappen has had 1 retirement due to power unit issues at Hungary (power loss), plus the brake failure at Britain. 2 retirements due to collision damage (Baku and Bahrain).

            As for grid penalties, Ricciardo has had to take them 3 weekends (Germany, Italy, Russia) and Verstappen in 2 (Monaco and Russia), but he had crashed in FP3 at Monaco and he didn’t take part in qualifying, so he might not have needed it.

          9. @casjo I stand entirely and embarrassingly corrected

          10. By the way, I’m not suggesting a conspiracy (not seriously, at least) but Ricciardo has had abysmal luck when it comes to reliability.

          11. @casjo Good summary, RBR have never been fair with their engine partners regardless of the reliabilty anyway. So now the marriage is over they openly play the blame game… RBR being RBR.

        2. @hahostolze The Renault works team has had far less reliability calamities, and McLaren encountered no issues with their engines, by all means. It seems that Red Bull has a packaging issue, but are willing to deflect all the culpabilities at their engine partner.

          As you insisted in your subsequent replies, you don’t seem to resort to asserting factual claims, but rather based on your narrative. Hulkenberg’s DNF’s were primarily related to his accidents, whereas McLaren had to face a couple of issues of their own (e.g. Faulty gearboxes).

          In conclusion, Renault’s engine reliability isn’t as bad as what Red Bull made it out to be. Must be doubly frustrating if Red Bull makes the same mistake with Honda next year.

          1. Agree with @james1472. Besides the packaging of the engine RBR uses different fuel and lubricants than Renault. That also, possibly, contributes to the engine issues.

            I feel fot Ricci, he deserves a bether goodbye than this.

          2. “…got Grosjean’d …. and Grosjean’d ..”

            LOL…Good one @casjo

      2. the Renault works team probably doesn’t push the engine and other components as hard as RedBull do, because they don’t want to have frequent technical failures which would make them look bad. That’s one of the explanations for the gap in performace between the works team and RBR.

        1. @gechichan no way, beside just check quali (where everyone push) and you will see the defiicit to RBR is definitely on the aero/chassis.

          1. i said that this is one of the explanations. I agree that the most important difference is the aero / chassis and also driver skills.

  3. There always does seem to be more failures on the Red Bull than the other Renaults. Wonder whether the aggressive packaging of their car is causing failures to happen more often.

    I’m hoping fortunes change for Danny, he’s too good a driver to be retiring every week

  4. What an abysmal season Daniel has had after winning Monaco, i hope he can get some results in the remaining races this season and show what he’s capable of. I doubt if we’ll see much of him in the seasons to come, which is a shame for such a good driver and personality.

  5. Maybe this DNF was caused by his collision with VET? Something broke half and eventually caused the failure? Just thinking…

    1. @rj01
      Did he hit someone in Bahrain aswell?

  6. Ricciardo has had as many DNFs as both Renault team drivers combined so far this yr. So to blame the Renault engine for his non finishes is really drawing a long….long bow I think. Also for some reason DR seems to be having far more issues than his “team mate”, even though they are using the same engine.
    RB were very angry about Ricciardos defection to Renault, they spent quite a bit of time trying to drag him down in the press using passive aggressive language even getting Verstappen to speak out about it.
    Much has been said about the toxic form of favouritism inside of RB. Perhaps those rumours and whispers that have leaked out are closer to the mark than not.

    1. @johnrkh, you should join the special club mentioned above (meeting 2 doors down from Mojave desert Alien City group and next to the 911 complot theorists).
      @jimmi-cynic, even suggested some special headgear to don.

      1. Just coincidence then???

      2. @coldfly Lol, agreed. “Much has been said about the toxic form of favouritism inside of RB”…by @johnrkh and nobody else.

        1. @robbie, on the other hand, Webber has stated in his autobiography that, whilst individuals such as Horner might have tried to be more even handed, Marko and Mateschitz often were pretty openly biased in favour of Vettel within the team – leading to Webber eventually losing trust in Horner when he saw that Horner was being undercut by those wanting to keep in with Marko and Mateschitz and therefore favouring Vettel over Webber.

          With previous instances of Red Bull’s senior management having been biased in favour of a particular driver, and with Horner having publicly talked about how Red Bull were offering Verstappen the opportunity to “build the team around him” when they renewed his contract last year, is it any wonder that people are asking the question whether we might be seeing a repeat of that behaviour?

          1. what examples of favoritism are we talking about here? This is an article regarding mecahnical failures, is anyone suggesting that RedBull are providing RIC with lesser hardware that his teammate? If so, that is beyond tinfoil hat conspiracies IMO.
            RIC is my favorite driver, but i can’t say i’ve seen anything so far that would constitute as obvious favoritism towards Max. And i’m sure Danny would have pointed these out, if they actually happened, just like he did in qually for Austria when he thought he was beeing disadvantaged by always being the first one on track (i turned out that those were the rules, and Max did the same the previous GP).

  7. Poor Ricciardo.After Monaco a Black Cat must have crossed his path then went back for a second crack just for good measure.

  8. Too many instances where it only affects RIC.
    I don’t know how they are doing it, but RBR is at the center of it.
    Marko and Horner are spiteful and are getting revenge against both RIC for leaving and making them look like fools when they said he had nowhere to go.

    1. Why wouldn’t RBR think they are better than Renault and therefore the better place for DR to be, and hence the ‘nowhere else to go’ remark? DR surprised everyone with his decision, which tells us he was extremely tempted to stay. He had pretty much told Horner and Marko only a day or two before, that he would stay with them. Stop trying to make RBR sound evil in this. They are going to miss DR and wanted him to stay.

      1. Of course they wanted him to stay – to be their next Mark Weber. They proclaimed Versteppen to be their future – Ricciardo decided to chance it and hop to another team.
        It remains to be seen whether it was a good or bad move yet the majority out there seems to think Honda is a sure thing – laughable.
        And as far as Honda being better than Renault this if this year is any indication, it’s much the same – a lot of talking with little results.
        RBR are just as I said, classless and spiteful. Marko’s arrogance has taken a hit as Dan and James Key have walked. There is a reason why Key left to join a sub tier team – he was supposed to be Newey’s successor – no thanks.
        From constantly berating Renault to the point of rebadging their engine to Horner telling the world Alonso needed a psychiatrist for running Indy, they are a arrogant lot.
        It will be quite entertaining if Honda doesn’t meet their expectations next year. Marko, Max and daddy will eat them alive.
        I don’t wish for it, but if it Honda thinks Alonso was harsh….

        1. @Mark While I do agree with you about Honda, in that I will have to see it to believe it, and I haven’t jumped on the ‘Honda is better than Renault now’ bandwagon, the rest of your opinion is simply wrong and misguided, coming from some sort of axe you have to grind.

          1. Horner/Marko are an arrogant pair – incontrovertible…
            Not at all ‘wrong and misguided”… and perhaps less to do with axes than your own comment.
            You are in danger of maligning others, and their opinions, just because they don’t agree with you.
            You gave your opinion; someone else gave their’s. All you’ve done is half-heartedly reiterated yours, and attempted to prove your case by suggesting the other argument MUST be biased…
            But not biased yourself, are you…?
            Come on, man… I’m sure you can do better.

          2. (@robbie) Your a one eyed Verstappen fan which is fine, gives you a very focused view of F1 :))
            But your just as guilty as anyone else of bias and over the top posts.
            Your willingness and enthusiasm in agreeing with the comments made by Marko and Horner when they publicly criticised Ricciardo for have the audacity to leave says a lot about you.

          3. @BlackJackFan When it comes to the language being used like ‘classless’ and ‘spiteful’ or ‘constantly berating’ yeah that to me is tabloid fodder so I’m going to call that wrong. An indication of that is when the tongue in cheek quip by Horner of FA needing a psychiatrist for running Indy, is taken seriously. Way over the top to try to slag someone for making a joke which shows an obvious bias that goes into the territory where Mark loses credibility for his ‘opinion,’ when it appears more about an axe to grind than reality.

            Similarly @johnrkh yes I’m going to react when someone tries to claim Horner and Marko ‘publicly criticized’ DR for leaving them, when the reality is far far tamer than that. Exactly what quote offended you so much more than it offended DR?

            Giving an opinion is one thing, but reaching beyond reason with schoolyard level characterizations to support that opinion is another.

          4. Robbie – calm down a tad; try to see things from other people’s perspective; indeed, try to acknowledge that other people are allowed an opinion, and that it might differ from yours. It’s called communication.
            You stated your point(s) – some people agree with you, some do not… Your having to endlessly disagree with them, and retaliate with the same comment, or by changing the subject, is called something else…
            That’s how it goes. That’s life. Grow up.

      2. Hi Robbie… I wasn’t surprised at the RIC announcement… As soon as VER’s deal was done RIC had to realise he was unlikely to be champion with Red Bull… His choice was between occasional wins (maybe) with RB… or another team, as No.1. Renault isn’t a great alternative but… I feel he was obliged to accept whatever was offered… or turn into Webber/Button…
        As for what Horner/Marko asserted… Nothing these two ever say can any more automatically be assumed to be true… Come on…!

        1. @BlackJackFan I feel that the other option, since nothing has been preventing DR from winning some races and outpointing Max, was to have reacted to Max’s going to them to re-commit by he himself re-committing, and staying to stamp his authority on the team. Some around here love to tell me how DR beat Max in 2016 and 2017. Full stop. Why couldn’t he have simply committed to the team and kept up the beating of Max? One answer is that he thought he could get himself in a WCC level car at Ferrari or Mercedes, but whatever…the point is nothing was holding DR back at RBR other than their cars being third in the WCC.

          Somehow it went from DR beating Max, full stop, to Max is their number one, full stop, and I don’t see what has changed. Max stepped up last year, DR decided to leave it until he finally had to make a decision, after seeing the lay of the land, and after beating Max yet again at the start of this season, but that is supposed to all add up to Horner and Marko are the lying enemies who would make DR Max’s Webber? DR sure has done a lot of beating of Max for someone who is a Webber to him.

          Do I believe Max has the ability to earn the number one spot each season, like LH and SV does? Absolutely. But both VB and KR seem confident that they had every opportunity at the start of the year to take up that slot by outperforming their teammates in the same equipment. I see it no differently at RBR.

          Mind you, the one glaring difference is that when you are in a third place car, there is little time for designating ones and twos…you need both working together and both doing the best they possibly can every day. There is zero point to having a ‘Webber’ on the team when you are not fighting for the Championships. So no, I reject the notion that DR would have only ended up being Max’s Webber had he stayed at RBR. And he did say it was the toughest decision he had ever made. Does that sound like someone happy to get out of an uncomfortable or a no-win situation? I certainly got no vibe whatsoever from DR that he thought he was being shaded on the team in favour of
          Max, other than with the inevitable compliments towards Max when he went to them last year and showed his full commitment to them.

          Yeah last year when Max committed to them Horner said something about him now having the chance to build the team around him. He had just shown us he wanted to be there through 2020. Why wouldn’t Horner say something like that? That doesn’t mean DR wouldn’t have had the same opportunity had he shown the same level of commitment. As a third place team they would have both been encouraged to win as much as possible…place as high as you can every day. It will be the same with Max and Pierre. No third place team would handcuff one driver in favour of another when they need all the points they can get. But we do know that if there’s an LH here and an SV there and they’re splitting wins, the math starts to kick in pretty early in the season, so a bloke really has to come out of the blocks beating his teammate early, when they are on a WCC/WDC level team. Otherwise, like at RBR, it’s whatever either of you can do and preferably both that would be greatly welcomed. Webber was a ‘Webber’ when RBR was dominant. Like LH with his Webber who Toto wants to see do better next year.

          1. Wow… Unbelievably verbose reply that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my comment…
            All that can be surmised from this is that you like to have the last word, and that you will persist until everyone agrees with you… even by just changing the subject.
            A tad immature, if you ask me… but I do realise you are not… as you clearly have no interest in anybody else’s opinion… ;-)

          2. @BlackJackFan I think I have made valid points and as far as I know this is a discussion. How was my response nothing to do with your comment? You claimed to have been unsurprised at DR’s announcement and it stems back to Max’s, and I claim he was still pretty much on the fence right up until the end, given that two days prior he had told Horner and Marko he was staying. I’m not always just going to let a conversation go when I disagree with what is being said. Why is it ok for you to not let it go, but I must?

          3. I rest my case. lol.

    2. they said he had nowhere to go

      And he seems to be going ‘nowhere’.
      As a huge Ricciardo fan, it hates me to say this.

      1. @coldfly – F1 is a fickle sport, so you never know what 2019 will bring. It could be the year Renault finally come good on their promises.

        Remember 2017 when Red Bull were supposed to wipe the floor with their competitors, given the new aero regs? And how they had a stuttering start instead? Fortunes ebb and flow, so fingers crossed for a good 2019!

      2. (@coldfly) As as a ‘huge’ Riciardo fan you would prefer he stay at RB and be treated as a back stop for Verstappen? The move to Renault was in the works for some time.

        1. @johnrkh Tell me why a third place team would favour one driver over another when they would need both drivers doing everything they possibly can every day in order to stop being a third place team and to advance themselves higher up the grid?

          1. This is a question I ask myself a lot.
            For some reason it seems top teams such as RBR, Merc and Ferrari want the WDC as much if not more than the WCC.

          2. Mark, the answer is simple – even just being third in the WCC ensures that they get a substantial chunk more than the rest of the field, whilst the relative increase from moving up a place in the WCC is not massive at that point – for a team in the midfield pack, going from $70 million to $80 million is, relatively speaking, more significant than, say, a top team going from $150 million to $160 million.

            Furthermore, you are potentially beginning to maximise the potential marketing value from the WCC, as unless you are able to win it, it’s not really going to make a huge difference if you were 2nd or 3rd in the WCC.

            If you are in that position in the championship, chances are that the financial opportunities from making one of your drivers a major name start becoming more significant than that from the WCC. When Vettel was there, Horner did admit that it was a lot more financially attractive for Red Bull if Vettel won the WDC instead of Webber because Vettel was a more marketable driver – equally, the rather fanatical element of Verstappen’s fan base means that Red Bull can scent the opportunity to milk his fans for a rather sizeable amount.

            That is why, I suspect, those teams have a strong interest in winning the WDC and are prepared to sacrifice some success in the WCC – they’re already close to maxing out their potential gains in the WCC, so the commercial opportunities from making a driver a star start shifting things that way instead.

          3. (@robbie) Read anons post, he has said pretty much what I think about the situation better than I could.

          4. @johnrkh anon wrote a post higher up as well, similarly on marketability. See @gechichan ‘s response to that one. I disagree with what anon seems to be implying, that teams will basically settle for their spot in the WCC and just go ahead and start marketing one driver to make up for that. Given that almost always the WDC winner had the WCC car, they go hand in hand. Promoting (favouring) one driver only goes so far if a team can never get better than third in the WCC, for that driver will never be a WDC anyway. At some point you’d have to back up the hype with something of substance. That would mean developing the WCC car.

            Just to again point out the difference between then and now, since I feel they are getting bundled up into one…when RBR had the WCC car they had Vettel moreso at one with the car and generally being quite on top of MW. They backed SV not unlike Merc backs LH and Ferrari SV. MW didn’t exactly run away from the team and instead chose to stay in the WCC car and see what might happen.

            Today we are talking about RBR who sits third in the WCC. There is no evidence of favouritism towards DR, nothing even from DR himself on that, and until they have a WCC car and find themselves needing to make that decision, it is pure speculation that DR would be made a ‘Webber.’ There is no evidence whatsoever, after seeing what DR has done on the team with Max there, that being leading him up to and including the first half of this year, that DR would be disadvantaged on the team, even if they have verbalized what we have all seen, that Max is special if not rough around the edges at times. Max’s announcement was over a year ago, and yet DR continued to outpoint him for the next year, up until a few months ago. How that all translates to Max being favoured which is allegedly why DR left, is beyond me. DR himself struggled with the decision, and yet some have simply convinced themselves that the reason HAS to be that he didn’t want to be a Webber, when there is little to compare between the two scenarios of SV/MW in dominant cars and MV/DR in third place cars that have had DR, as many love to point out to me, beating Max.

  9. Too many instances where it only affects RIC.
    I don’t know how they are doing it, but RBR is at the center of it.
    Marko and Horner are spiteful and are getting revenge against both RIC for leaving and making them look like fools when they said he had nowhere to go.

      1. Mark must be onto something, @robbie.
        I’ve read the same comment earlier; it can’t be fake if it’s been said twice ;)

        1. @coldfly I second that.

  10. GtisBetter (@)
    22nd October 2018, 15:52

    He must be overdriving!

    /s

Comments are closed.