Sebastian Vettel to get new F1 chassis for Italian GP
Sebastian Vettel will be given a new chassis for the Italian Grand Prix as his Red Bull team tries to get to the bottom of his recent struggles, AUTOSPORT has learned
The Milton Keynes-based outfit was left mystified as to why the reigning world champion struggled for pace in the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend after being so competitive in qualifying.
Team principal Christian Horner said Vettel's form was so unusual at Spa that he suspects something was broken on the car.
"A lot of things have gone wrong for him - even this weekend [in Spa] with a spark plug failure on Friday that robbed him of a lot of time," explained Horner after the race.
"We need to check to see if anything has actually broken on the car. It was extremely unusual what we saw."
Investigations on the car that Vettel used in Belgium are ongoing, but the team is taking no risks and has elected to give Vettel a new chassis for Monza.
The chassis change for Italy will be the second time that Vettel has switched cars this season.
The German swapped over for the Spanish Grand Prix following early season troubles that he and the team could not explain.
NEW ENGINEER CONFIRMED
Red Bull also officially confirmed on Wednesday that Vettel will have a new race engineer in 2015 as Guillaume Rocquelin moves to a more senior role at the team.
As AUTOSPORT reported last weekend, Rocquelin, who is more commonly known as 'Rocky', is to become head of race engineering and will oversee both Vettel and Ricciardo next year.
His place will be taken by Gianpiero Lambiase, who is to join the team from Force India.
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