London, England - Ferrari on Sunday (April 3) played down rising speculation its championship campaign could be derailed in 2016 by a fundamental reliability flaw.
Amid rumours of a fault with the turbo design, Kimi Raikkonen - who retired with a flaming airbox in Australia - said before the Bahrain Grand Prix when asked if Ferrari has a problem: "Well, at the last race we did."
'Engine failure'
That was before Sebastian Vettel could not even make it to the grid after the warm-up lap on Sunday, as he pulled over his Ferrari car with billowing smoke.
The German said on radio: "I think I might have an engine failure."
But once back to the paddock, neither Ferrari nor Vettel were confirming his suspicions about the nature of the problem.
Read: Raikkonen praised by Ferrari boss
Maurizio Arrivabene, the team boss, told German newspaper Bild it seems the failure was simply a valve or injector.
Arrivabene said: "That's never happened to us before," telling Auto Motor und Sport that it is "90%" sure that Vettel has lost the power unit altogether.
Two consecutive engines failures
But both Vettel and Raikkonen insisted their respective failures in Bahrain and Australia are not a sign that Ferrari's title campaign is off track.
Raikkonen said: "I had an issue in the last race (Australia GP), Seb had something here.
"It's not ideal and it's an unfortunate part of the game but, like I said, we have some work to do."
Nooooooo #Seb5's car parked, technical failure #BahrainGP #redseason
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 3, 2016
Failure on #Seb5's car was totally unexpected, no warning before, we're all very disappointed #BahrainGP #redseason
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 3, 2016
Vettel agreed: "It's not ideal and we can't be proud of it. But we had a good preparation over the winter, we are pushing very hard and we know that we can still improve."
Boss Arrivabene said Sunday in Bahrain was painful for Ferrari, but the bright side is that if Raikkonen's fingers had not slipped on the clutch lever at the start, the Finn might have challenged Nico Rosberg for the win.
The Italian said:"Perhaps, and I stress this, perhaps this has compromised his chance to win."
Raikkonen agreed: "I got surprisingly close to Nico at the end."
Merc request new clutch design
But it's an open question as to whether Lewis Hamilton, in the other Mercedes, might have been even further down the road had he not suffered a poor start and been bumped into a half-spin by Valtteri Bottas.
Toto Wolff claims the Briton, who fought back to third, was further handicapped to the tune of one second per lap due to damage from the Bottas clash.
The Mercedes boss confirmed in Bahrain that a request to parent Daimler has been made for a new clutch design, to help the drivers get more cleanly off the grid.
Hamilton said: "I think it was just not a good getaway by myself.
"At least I could keep going (after the crash with Bottas) and still have some performance left in the car to get back into the top three."
Team mate Rosberg leads the world championship by 17 points, but Hamilton insists he is not worried.
The Briton said: "In Rumble in the Jungle, Muhammad Ali got the dude to believe that he was winning but he didn't, so anything can happen."
LH: "I didn’t get a good start. I just didn’t get away as well as I needed to & that was down to me" #F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/IP8kZS0qjE
— MERCEDES AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) April 3, 2016