• Korean Grand Prix

Renault apologises to Red Bull for engine failure

Sebastian Vettel's engine blew up in Korea © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Christian Horner
• |
• Sebastian Vettel

• Teams:
• Red Bull

Renault has apologised to Red Bull for Sebastian Vettel's engine failure at the Korean Grand Prix, which cost him near-certain victory and the lead in the title race.

Vettel was comfortably ahead of Alonso when his engine let go on one of Korea's long straights on lap 46. It was the engine's last scheduled race in the back of Vettel's Red Bull and, according to the team, he still has enough to make the end of the season without exceeding the eight engine limit.

"Renault must apologise to the whole team for the engine failure on Seb's car," Renault's principal engineer for Red Bull Frabrice Lom said. "We need to investigate more before giving more details about the failure - it was an engine that was at its third grand prix but it obviously wasn't expected. What a bad result for us, we scored no points after starting on the front row - it's a big disappointment."

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said his team would bounce back after its "appalling luck" in Korea.

"Some days motor racing can be cruel and for Red Bull today it was unfortunately one of those days. Sebastian had the cruellest of luck - ten laps to go and out of the blue he had an engine failure. As a team we'd done everything right today and we had the pace to win.

"It's our first non-points score this year, but we leave here still in the lead of the constructors' and we're still in it in the drivers' too; Mark's second and Sebastian's only one race-win behind the leader. We gave Fernando [Alonso] a big present today, but it was only two weeks ago that we were celebrating a one-two finish and we'll be back in Brazil."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.