Renault to investigate series of failures

Renault will investigate a series of faults which caused Red Bull, Lotus and Caterham to have problems during the European Grand Prix in Valencia last weekend.

Renault are the engine suppliers to Red Bull Racing, Lotus, Williams and Caterham, with their current V8 engine one of the best on the grid in Formula One this season.

They have won three races in total thanks to wins from Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Pastor Maldonado, whilst the Lotuses of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen have consistently challenged for the race victory and taken a number of podium places.

But in Valencia, most of their teams had issues.

After qualifying for the second part of qualifying on Saturday, Heikki Kovalainen would have been looking forward to a good race on Sunday for Caterham, but his efforts were thwarted when a KERS failure meant that he had to race affectively with one hand tied behind his back.

But at least the problems on the Caterham car didn't prevent them from finishing the race.

While leading the Grand Prix, the Red Bull of double F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel suffered an alternator failure while leading the Grand Prix and was forced to retire after dominating.

It is believed that his Red Bull overheated during the laps behind the safety car which caused the engine to shut down.

Later in the race and the Lotus of Romain Grosjean was battling for the lead with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso when a similar problem struck, also causing him to retire when the alternator failed and the electrical power to the engine stopped.

Overall not a good weekend for Renault's customers.

'We do need to hold our hands up and apologise to both Red Bull and Lotus on the problems on the sister cars of Sebastian and Romain. a Renault statement said and was quoted by Sky Sports.

'Both suffered alternator failures, although it seems for different reasons at this point in time.

'We will of course thoroughly investigate the reasons for this when we get the units back to Viry to try and ensure that Red Bull and Lotus, plus our other partners, do not have the same issue in the future.'