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Horner rubbishes fuel consumption concerns

ESPNF1 Staff
March 26, 2010 « Schumacher looking forward to a competitive weekend | »
Christian Horner says there is no truth in Ron Dennis's claims © Sutton Images
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Red Bull boss Christian Horner has hit back at Ron Dennis' claims that Sebastian Vettel had to back off in Bahrain to conserve fuel.

Vettel was leading the race when his pace dropped off and he fell behind the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa as well as the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton. The team blamed a spark plug failure for the apparent lack of power but Dennis speculated that there might have been a more embarrassing problem. In Australia Horner denied the comments in no uncertain terms.

"I guess the problem with age is that your hearing tends to fail you a little bit and perhaps Ron didn't hear the misfire that was there and probably didn't see the fact that the other car also finished the race without any issues at all," he said. "It wasn't anything to do with the size of the fuel tank. As I say it was a spark plug issue and that was it."

He added that balancing power against fuel consumption was a difficult task, but insisted it was not one his team had concerns over.

"You push the boundaries in all areas," Horner said. "Fuel efficiency is important. Power is equally important but obviously the amount of fuel you start the race with has an impact on lap time, so it is down to the engine manufacturers. Their consumption is something that they have been quite focussed on over the winter."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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