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Pierre Gasly was on course for a decent result at the Bahrain GP. However, all of a sudden, his AlphaTauri shut down and then subsequently caught fire resulting in a DNF. Sadly for Gasly, there might be more pain in store as it does appear that the component that failed might be battery-related.
Since each driver gets two components for the entire season, it almost certainly warrants Gasly facing a grid penalty at some point of time during the season.
Talking to the media afterward, AlphaTauri Engineering director Jody Egginton confirmed that the team had no warning of any problems:
"It was an instant failure, a total loss of electrical power. Right now we don't know for sure if it might be battery related. So we're still investigating. We have to find the fault first, but one scenario is that we have to change the element of the power unit. One minute the car was still running and then it was off, total failure."
Egginton acknowledged that the crew now has a lot of work to do on Pierre Gasly's car before Friday practice in Jeddah:
"We are still in the process of assessing the damage, but at least the rear suspension will be new, much of the wiring will be new, the bodywork has been signed. We will examine the battery and the combustion engine because a lot of fire extinguishing agent went into the car. The worst case scenario is a drive element and a chassis, but it's too early to tell at the moment."
Pierre Gasly: I had no warning!
Speaking about the incident, Gasly revealed that he had no prior warning of any issues in the car before everything shutdown.
"I literally had no warning, which is very strange. I'm not exactly sure what happened yet. But just before the first corner the whole car turned off and I parked it. Then there was basically a barbecue at the back of the car."
Until that point, Gasly had put together an admirable effort in his AlphaTauri. He had dragged his car into Q3 in the dying stages of Q2 and had even challenged Magnussen at one point in time in the race. The battery component failure is indeed a bitter blow for the Frenchman at the start of the season.
