Hulkenberg: Renault needs to get on top of costly reliability issues

Nico Hulkenberg has called on Renault to get on top of its recent Formula 1 reliability woes, which he says are “costing ourselves results”.

The German suffered a suspected MGU-K failure for the second consecutive race as he retired from the Chinese Grand Prix after just 16 laps.

It followed a disastrous double retirement for the French manufacturer in Bahrain, with both Hulkenberg and teammate Daniel Ricciardo suffering late MGU-K related engine issues.

Renault had produced a new spec MGU-K following McLaren driver Carlos Sainz’s failure at the Melbourne season-opener, but its problems continued in Shanghai.

“It looks like it is connected the MGU-K again, so we have more work to do,” Hulkenberg explained.

“We are looking into it but I had a loss of power, so it is a power related issue. It happened a couple of laps before I stopped, but we couldn’t fix it, so the team asked me to park the car.

“It is not good news and we really have to get on top of these things because we are costing ourselves results, experience and points.

“We know we have homework to do on that side. But we need to fix this sooner than later.”

Ricciardo, who registered his first points since joining Renault with a seventh-place finish in China, said he was unaware of his teammate’s issue during the race but “suspected” it would be reliability-induced.

“I didn’t know but I suspected because I didn’t see his name on the score board,” he added. “And at one point I stopped seeing him in my mirrors - I felt it was too early for his pit stop, so I did suspect but I preferred not to know and to just focus on my race.

“Now I know, there is still some work to do reliability wise. I don’t know what his problem was, but I know it was not an accident.”