Toro Rosso failure rate is no "coincidence" - Renault

Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley both started the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend with 10 places of grid penalties after taking new MGU-Hs, the eighth of the season for their respective cars.

However, Gasly's component failed after just one flying lap, while Hartley stopped on the circuit with a turbo shaft failure on the out-lap of his first proper run.

Gasly is now set to lose a further 15 places on the grid for a replacement MGU-H and turbo, while his teammate's penalty situation is currently not clear.

This comes on the heels of a Mexican GP weekend in which Gasly sat out most of practice and the whole qualifying session, and Hartley suffered failures in qualifying and the race.

"We are not happy with that situation, and we take it very seriously," Renault's Cyril Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.

"Toro Rosso has suffered in the last couple of events much more issues than other teams, and obviously when it's happening, because of the regulations, and because of parts availability and production lead time, that's causing issues."

Abiteboul then hinted the problem was team-specific, admitting to concerns over the way the STR12 works the Renault power unit.

"We do have a little bit of a concern about the way that our engine is operated in the Toro Rosso car," he said, "which may explain why we have had so many issues coming from Toro Rosso specifically.

"There are never coincidences in this sport."

He conceded, however, that the problems were made worse by a "snowball" effect of sorts, as Renault's Viry factory tried to keep up with the unexpected demand for extra components, making use of reconditioned parts to cope with it.

"We were not assuming that we would have the issues that we have had, and therefore at some point you have to be managing with the parts you have," Abiteboul said.

"It's only been two weeks since Mexico, we sent the parts back to Viry, we worked on a bank holiday in order to sign off as many of the parts that had seen some issues as possible.

"With the logistics and the timing issues there's a limit to what we can do and the number of new parts that we can bring, obviously.

"It's a snowball effect. Once that snowball starts to roll, it's very difficult to stop it.

"We are doing our best in order to contain it, but there will be a limit in the way we can mitigate the consequences of what has happened, which we are still trying to understand."

The problems have come at a critical time as Toro Rosso is just five points ahead of Renault in the world championship, and six ahead of Haas – and the drop from sixth to eighth could represent a loss of $6.5m in F1 prize money.

The team, for its part, remains convinced that it has done nothing to contribute to the problems which have disproportionately affected its cars.

"It's worrying," team principal Franz Tost told Motorsport.com. "Everything is the same in the installation, nothing has been changed since the beginning of the year.

"From Toro Rosso's side, regarding the car, there's no part from the chassis connected to the MGU-H that has caused anything.

"There's nothing we can do, just see which parts we get, which power unit and so on."