Renault fears more problems in Bahrain

Daniel Ricciardo required a precautionary engine change between qualifying and the Shanghai race - taking him onto his third internal combustion engine of 2015 already - while both his Red Bull team-mate Daniil Kvyat and Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen retired from the race with Renault failures.

Renault's F1 chief Cyril Abiteboul said the company knew it had taken reliability gambles in its push for more performance this season and that the particular problem that struck in China was not a surprise.

"We knew we had this reliability risk above our heads," he told reporters in China.

"Obviously it struck today, not the best day.

"We knew it was a weakness so there was a plan in place. We need to make sure the plan is good enough for the size of the issues we had today, and whether it can be addressed fairly quickly.

"I'm not quite sure from a logistical perspective that it could be addressed for Bahrain, but certainly our aim has been to have absolutely no reliability issues by Monaco.

"We knew that the first engine we built had some reliability weaknesses.

"The plan is to make sure that the future engine we will be building has absolutely no reliability issues."

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner - who held a joint media briefing with Abiteboul post-race - said while problems had been anticipated, the extent of them was a surprise.

"I don't think anybody expected us to be on engine three at race three in any of our scenarios," he said.

"We accept that sometimes to find performance you've got to take some risks.

"Calculated risks are what Red Bull has always bought into, but the frustrating thing for both parties is that we're in this situation with three of the allotted four engines in use going into race four."

Asked by AUTOSPORT how that would affect Red Bull's approach to Bahrain, Horner replied: "You've just got to go for it and hope for the best."

Abiteboul admitted that the reliability problems were getting in the way of Renault's other efforts.

"A problem with reliability is bad for PR and also when you have to address reliability issues you're not necessarily in a position to address power, which is also still missing," he said.

Ricciardo, who finished ninth after a poor start dropped him from seventh to 17th, said he had resigned himself to getting engine penalties early in the season.

"We're going to get copped with at least one," he acknowledged.

"But hopefully the reliability improves. My car today was fine but obviously Dany and Max went up in smoke."