- Red Bull
Red Bull must be smart over penalties - Vettel
Sebastian Vettel believes he could suffer more than one engine penalty in the remaining races of 2014 but thinks Red Bull needs to be clever when it decides to take them.
Every engine this year is split into six components, with drivers allowed five of each before incurring a penalty. There is a ten-place penalty handed out whenever a sixth component is used, with five-place penalties handed out for additional changes beyond that.
Vettel and Red Bull are expecting to take a change as early as the next race in Sochi, but the world champion thinks the team can make the best of a bad situation through its useage of the different components.
"The rules are as they are and surely at some stage we have to take some penalties," Vettel said. "Which penalties those will be is not entirely clear yet, we are waiting for some parts. We hope we can get as far as we can [without a penalty] but it's inevitable on my side we'll go for an extra engine which is already ten positions after qualifying.
"Potentially there's more waiting for us, which is only a consequence of the poor season we had in the first part of the season in terms of reliability. That's something we knew back then and now we have to figure out what is the smartest plan and the smartest track to come up with the penalty."
Vettel says his only focus is on building on the momentum of his second place in Singapore despite continuing rumours about a potential move away from Red Bull.
"There have always been rumours over the last couple of years, especially at this time of the season. Jenson already has 17 team-mates for next year, I have been one of them a couple of weeks ago, maybe next week I will be again. It's not really in my head coming off the back of Singapore. We made some progress and I hope we can carry that momentum into this race, that's really where the focus lies.
"It's never great to not have the right feeling and get things lined up the way they should be lined up. Now we've had a bit more of a consistent weekend and have more time look at the stuff coming our way. There's still huge potential which I feel we are getting closer to but there's a lot of work ahead of us to make sure we extract it here and in the next couple of races."
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