22/10/2010
NEWS STORY
With an eye on the title fight and this weekend's Grand Prix, Red Bull has opted to give Mark Webber a new engine, his eighth and final powerplant for the season.
The Australian has had an advantage over his various title rivals in terms of engines since Monza when he opted not to fit a new unit for one of the most demanding events on the calendar.
Now, mindful of the long straights at Yeongam, the Australian and his team has opted to call on his last allotted unit without penalty.
By contrast, at Ferrari there is concern that Fernando Alonso, who suffered a number of failures earlier in the season, could find his championship hopes compromised.
Asked at today's press conference whether he was concerned that the Spaniard could run out of engines, team boss Stefano Domenicali said: "I really hope not. If we do it will be tremendously difficult to try to fight to the end. What we are able to do is try to manage the mileage with the existing engine and this is our plan and hopefully we will manage up to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
"If we will have any reliability issues then it will be really traumatic," he continued, "as it would be almost impossible then to recover points we need to recover if we want to fight with Red Bull and McLaren as they are extremely strong. We cannot really have any problems, otherwise it is finished."
Asked if there are any limitations the team can put in place he replied: "Not really. It is a matter of how much mileage you can do on an engine. This is the only thing. We have extended the use of it as at home we did the test in order to make sure it was not an issue. But we need to be careful not to overheat anything. We need to make sure that in terms of temperature we have to be not aggressive. This is something we need to make sure above all for the hot races that we will have after Korea."