McLaren has revealed “power loss” as the reason for Daniel Ricciardo’s retirement in Brazil.
Ricciardo had a torrid race at Interlagos. He was off the pace from Saturday itself, and then Sunday saw him struggle to make up places.
With his teammate at the back, he had more responsibility, but had to retire from the race due to a problem. The result was a disaster for McLaren, and more so because of Ferrari’s good performance.
McLaren revealed “power loss” as the reason for Ricciardo’s retirement in Brazil, and said that it was a crack on the chassis side that caused it.
“We had a power loss on track,” McLaren Team Principal Andreas Seidl said, as quoted by Fox Sports Australia.
“In the initial investigation we found a technical issue, a crack on the chassis side of the power unit installation, which we need to now investigate. I can give you a better update next week in Qatar.”
Unexpected troubles
Ricciardo gave his thoughts on the race, and said that he had never experienced this problem at McLaren before.
“We were looking like we were going to get a few points and the race was going pretty well, we were coping pretty well – potentially a one-stop strategy could have worked out for us strongly,” he said.
“It was definitely a better day than yesterday (Saturday), and I was happy with how we were going, but it was just out of our control today.
“We knew they (Ferrari) had to two-stop. I think they had a bit more pace but maybe through strategy we could’ve disrupted them. But then we had a loss of power and had to retire the car.
“Definitely a shame, but it was a much more promising day than (Saturday). We’ll take the positives from that, and we’ve got another chance next week,” he concluded.
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