Vettel says no reliability concerns

"No, not really," he said if he had reliability concerns for this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix.

"We are much more concerned that from the next race we'll all have to run the mirrors inboard and our car is losing quite some performance due to that, but reliability, no problems."

Outboard mirrors will be banned from the Chinese Grand Prix later this month amid concerns about visibility, especially for those teams who, like Red Bull, have mounted their mirrors on the sidepods of their cars for aerodynamic reasons.

Vettel, who has being hit by problems while leading the first two races of the season, insisted the reliability issues are just rare occurrences.

"I think we have a good group of people and I don't think there's one weak department causing all the problems," he added. "The failures were very, very seldom, but that's life and that's racing.

"For sure it's not good, and if you want to fight for the championship it's better not to have those kind of things, but on the other hand we are just two races into the season and there are so many races left. It's not a big deal."

The German also downplayed the significance of his team deciding to skip the first test of the pre-season, which he reckons has had no impact on the reliability.

"No, I wouldn't' say that. We don't have one big problem in the car. But sometimes one small thing breaks and then it leads to five other things to break, which then can have a big impact on your result.

"It's nothing big. We understood what happened and we have no concerns for this weekend."

The Red Bull driver suggested he is pleased with his own performance, having looked set for victory in both races before being hit by problems.

"At the end of the day there wasn't much I could have done better," he said. "If I had spun or whatever it would have been my fault, but this is much more difficult to get over with.

"I think the cars are built on the limit. We didn't have a single problem similar to what happened in Bahrain or Melbourne during testing. Shit happens, so we carry on."

He added: "Would, could, should is so nice but it didn't happen. In the end there's a lot of positives we can take from the first two races. We have a very strong car in qualifying and race conditions. For various reasons we didn't finish. For sure at the moment it's frustrating and the whole team you could see was down.

"But coming here only a week later we are happy again and looking forward to this race. And what happened in Bahrain and Melbourne happened, it's history and we can't change it now."