RIO DE JANEIRO — Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel is concerned about his team’s reliability problems ahead of the championship finale in Brazil.
Report by BBC Sport
Vettel (25) is 13 points clear of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. But he is worried about an alternator failure — the third on a Red Bull this season — on team-mate Mark Webber’s car at the United States Grand Prix.
Vettel said it was “not good news” but added: “It should be easy to find the problem and we should be prepared.”
The Red Bull driver finished second at the US Grand Prix behind Lewis Hamilton, with 31-year-old Alonso finishing third.
The result means the battle for the title goes down to the final race in Brazil this weekend, with Vettel, champion for the last two years, holding a 13-point lead over Alonso, who was world champion in 2005 and 2006. Victory for Alonso at Interlagos would give him his third drivers’ crown if Vettel finishes lower than fourth.
Second place for the Spaniard would mean he would only win the title if Vettel failed to make the top seven. Third spot for Alonso would require Vettel to finish lower than ninth. Vettel would become only the third driver to win three titles in a row if he secures victory in Brazil, following Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher.
The German has suffered two of Red Bull’s alternator failures, one when he was dominating the European Grand Prix in Valencia and another when running sixth in the Italian Grand Prix.
