Pat Symonds has revealed that Renault is concerned about the engine failure that befell
Fernando Alonso during last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, with the team still unable to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.
Having stormed to second on the grid courtesy of an inspired charge right at the end of qualifying, Alonso ran third for the opening stint of the race and then a solid fifth following the opening round of pit-stops, unable to challenge those ahead of him but similarly under little threat from behind. Then all of a sudden and without warning the engine in his R28 went bang on lap 35 – the
Régie's first such failure in a race since Monza, 2006 and one that broke the hearts of the double world champion's legions of fans thronging the Circuit de Catalunya.
"We got the engine back to Viry (
Renault's French HQ) on Monday morning [and] stripped it," Symonds said in Renault's latest
podcast on the
ITV-F1 website. "We had a good idea what the problem was even before we had taken the engine out of the car, [but] when it was confirmed on Monday morning it did surprise us.
"Although it was one of the areas of the engine that are always on the limit, racing is on the limit – that's what it's all about. It's not an area where we have had failures in this particular engine, so it's a little bit of a surprise for us."
The offending part was the distributor, with the Enstone-based squad still yet to establish a reason for its malfunction. Whilst Symonds admitted that was a concern, he insisted he was hopeful it would prove to be a one-off glitch and that the engineers would get to the bottom of the issue before the next race in Turkey in just ten days' time.
"While at this stage we know what the failure was, we don't have all the explanations as to why that component failed," the former championship-winning outfit's executive director of engineering underlined. "Any lack of understanding is a worry, [but] I'm pretty confident that our colleagues at Viry will have an answer.
