The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was running normally, however, on lap 35, three cars had reliability problems at the same time, something that forced Fernando Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas to abandon the test.
Before even starting the event in Jeddah, Yuki Tsunoda also had to retire due to a failure in his Honda engine, leaving four riders out of action due to breakdowns.
These types of failures were common at the beginning of the hybrid era , but with the development of cars and power units, these mishaps were no longer so persistent in the Grand Circus.
In Alpine they also suffered with reliability in the first race of the course, in Bahrain, since, despite scoring points with both cars, Alonso’s engine suffered an unspecified problem, and all this led the team’s boss French, Otmar Szafnauer , to speak about this area.
The Enstone team’s chief executive said the wave of dropouts at these early stages of the course reflects the fact that the 2022 regulation cars are so new that power unit manufacturers were in a hurry to achieve as much development as possible. , due to the freeze on most items that went into effect on March 1.
“Some things have happened that influence that,” said the Romanian of reliability in Jeddah. “One, all the cars are new, so you have totally new parts, and that’s rare.”
“Usually a percentage is carried over from one to the other and when you have spare parts they are tested from a reliability standpoint,” he continued.
“The other thing that happened is that everyone knew there was going to be an engine freeze, so all the engine manufacturers were making changes, both to the car and to the engine,” explained the Alpine boss. “Especially when you’re pushing to find performance.”
Szafnauer was also surprised by how few retirements due to mechanical failure so far under the circumstances: “My real surprise is not that there are reliability problems, but that there aren’t more, because everything is so new.”
“I think everyone has done a very, very good job on this. Do you remember the old days? You came to the first race and eight or six cars finished,” said the French team leader.
“So with this, and everybody doing a revamped power unit for Freeze, I’m surprised at how good the cars are,” he said.
