F1 News, Reports and Race Results

McLaren's Sainz hit with more engine component changes for Bahrain GP!

McLaren's Carlos Sainz has already started to eat into his inventory of engine elements following Renault's decision to add additional changes to the Spaniard's engine.

An MGU-K failure in Melbourne, after just 11 laps, compelled Renault to replace the device on Sainz's unit for this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix.

But the manufacturer has since added a second internal combustion engine, turbocharger and MGU-H.

As a reminder, drivers are allowed two MGU-K elements and three examples of the other components. Sainz is therefore just one MGU-K failure away from a grid penalty.

It is understood that Renault has discarded Sainz's crippled MGU-K from Melbourne, but it is not known if the other three elements were damaged and if they were, if they can be repaired and thus kept in the authorized pool of parts.

Sainz revealed on Thursday that the MGU-K appeared to be a weak point of Renault's power unit.
"It is true we had a couple of failures during testing, so it is something that is a weak point of the car," he said.

"We need to keep working on to ensure we don't throw any more points into the bin because we did throw a couple of them in Australia."

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