Sebastian Vettel is not concerned about Ferrari's reliability despite suffering an engine failure before the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Vettel failed to start the race, pulling over during the formation lap with smoke pouring from his engine when he had looked best place to take the fight to Mercedes from third on the grid. Ferrari had some reliability concerns over winter testing but Vettel says the team believed those problems had been solved.
Asked if reliability is a concern for Ferrari going forward, Vettel said: "Not really. Obviously it's not ideal when you park your car before the first lap. Over the winter we pushed very hard, some months ago we were looking a lot worse. But we had reason to be confident that we knew what was the problem [over testing] so it came as a surprise -- not just for me, but for the whole team."
Ferrari will conduct a full investigation into what caused the failure but team boss Maurizio Arrivabene says there is no link between Vettel's engine failure and Kimi Raikkonen's retirement in Australia.
"They are looking, the guys," Arrivabene said. "It looks like a valve or a piston injector. This is what I heard. Kimi was the turbo, nothing to do [with Vettel's].
When asked if he was concerned by reliability, he said: "It depends what it is. It could be a valve or a piece of the injector. They need to inspect the engine, this is the first brief they gave to me.