Is Vettel doing an Icarus?

[McZiderRed]

Poor Sebastian Vettel. He was looking like a title contender, but his Renault engines seem to be letting him down. There are six races remaining this season, but Vettal has used up six of his eight engine allocation for this year. Puts him, and RBR, in a bit of a pickle!

There are few options open to Vettel. Turn down the engine performance and hope the remaining engines last (with a bit of help from his already used engines from earlier in the season) or carry on as normal and take the hit of a potential grid penalty if he has to use a ninth engine.

What does eveyone think is the best option? Does Vettal nurse his remaining engines home, or does he go for broke, hope his luck is in so the remaining two engines "give him wings", and potentially risk "flying too close to the sun". *

I reckon this is a toughy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. My opinion would be to race as normal. Going conservative is no guarantee that he'll remain incident free anyway... Perhaps someone has an alternative option for Vettal?

F1Fanatic has an article on the subject. Click HERE.

* Icarus should have drank Red Bull. It gives you wings but without the wax!

 

[O_Danny_Boy]

I would say push on as is without changing approach, when you start changing the way you race you almost make more problems than you had to begin with.

 

[Brogan]

A few of us were discussing this the other day.

It's interesting that Vettel has had 2 engines go and Mark has had none.
Is this an indication that Seb V is a bit of a car-breaker like Kimi?

I'm not so sure it's easy to change your style of driving overnight.
Perhaps they can turn the revs/mixture down a bit but then that will hamper his chances.

As it is, he's going to disadvantaged anyway having to use engines with more mileage than some of the other drivers, meaning they won't have quite the same power output.

 

[GeoffP]

I'll bet right now the guys at Red Bull are trying to persuade themselves that there are reasons why they don't get Vettel to drive as Webber's rear gunner for the remaining races.

I wonder if they'll think of enough reasons?

 

[teabagyokel]

I'd imagine they can't make a hard and fast decision about it. If he has a British GP next week, he can lead off and tone down the engine for ½ the race and save it that way. If not, they could always take a grid penalty at a point of convenience - maybe when a Brawn is given a 10 place drop or if they're not competitive.