Vettel downplays Red Bull's reliability concerns

Sebastian Vettel has downplayed Red Bull's pre-season reliability niggles, saying every stoppage hasn't been a serious problem.

While Red Bull have shown pace during pre-season testing, the team has also suffered a number of reliability issues with both Vettel and his team-mate Mark Webber causing their fair share of red flags.

However, the German, who's 2009 title campaign was blighted by car and engine troubles, insists there is no cause for concern.

"No, not worried," he told Autosport when asked if the reliability of the RB6 was an issue.

"Obviously you don't want to stop, but sometimes you don't want to risk any damage and it's better to shut the car down if you see something wrong on the data

"Obviously in the race you'd try to continue, so sometimes it's nothing bad but it's better to shut the car down and bring it back and have a look. But obviously ideally you keep on running and you park the car in the garage and not somewhere on the circuit.

"But I don't think we have to fear reliability issues yet. It looks good. Everything that happened I think is normal. We have a new car, new parts, everything is a bit new and slightly different in design.

"The cars have changed, a bigger fuel cell but also lots of new small parts, everything has changed slightly and sometimes you realise you should've done it a bit differently, but you are on top of those things very quickly."

As for suggestions that Red Bull, together with Ferrari, look the stronger of the outfits heading into the season-opening Bahrain GP, Vettel believes it's too tight - and too confusing - to really tell.

"One day it looks like that. I think today Ferrari looked extremely quick. Probably this morning it was lower fuel - if you go in the 1m20s you have to be on low fuel - and also on the long run [Fernando] Alonso was quite quick.

"I don't know what was going on with McLaren and Mercedes today. I haven't looked that closely but they didn't seem to be that quick today.

"But you look at the other days at Jerez and you look at yesterday and probably the next two days as well and you'll have another surprise. Sometimes it shifts. But I think overall it will be extremely tight.

"All four teams are big teams and they have proven many times in the past that they are competitive. So it will be a close fight. Obviously I would love to tell you that we are a second ahead of everyone, but at the moment at least it's not the case."

Vettel downplays Red Bull's reliability concerns - Planet-F1 News from planet-f1.com