Vettel to Tackle Tough Engine Situation after Korea

It seems that not only Fernando Alonso has a big issue with engine wear this season, but also Red Bull's “golden boy” Sebastian Vettel. According to some recent reports after the Korean Grand Prix, the engines still available for the German driver in the last two rounds of the season are all high on mileage. Oh, and... we forgot, he doesn't have any more spate engines for the season.

The situation looks far from rosy at the moment for Vettel, who has just experienced an engine failure in Korea. To make things worse, that engine was supposed to endure some extra 500 miles of rpm, as it failed at only 1600 km, instead of the projected 2100 km. Which means one can't be too sure about the already used engines either.

“It's obviously not an ideal situation,” admitted the team manager Christian Horner in a recent interview with the press, after Korea. “Hopefully it will have a negligible effect on him.”

Well, one downside of this situation, regardless of whether Horner likes it or not, will be restricted mileage in the practice sessions for the German driver. As if happened in Korea, when Vettel did not lapped the Yeongam circuit too many times on Friday and Saturday morning, the German will try to preserve his engine as much as he can, in order to avoid another failure.

We'll remind you that the penalty for using an extra engine in the 2010 F1 championship is a 10-place grid penalty. Being Vettel's situation in the overall classification, where he sits 25 points behind leader Fernando Alonso, that penalty would prove crucial no matter if in Brazil or Abu Dhabi.

As a comparison, his teammate Mark Webber, who is also better positioned in the title fight, has one more spare engine for the remaining rounds of the 2010 campaign, which is more than enough to get him past the last finish line of the season.