The Ferrari 056 engine
Ferrari have said that they will use the engines that they had previously removed, during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
During the first race of the season, both Fernando Alonso’s and Felipe Massa’s engines became overheated after qualifying, and the team took the precautionary measure of changing both engines. They have not been used since, but Ferrari have since announced that they are fit to be used during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend.
The head of engine and electronics, Luca Marmorini, said:
We have carried out an in-depth study into what happened and the
two problems are not related to one another. In Sepang, Fernando’s
engine suffered a structural failure, of a type we had never
seen during the winter. We believe there was a role played by
the unusual way in which the driver had to use the engine during
the race, because of the gear selection problems he experienced
right from the start.
Additionally, there is no connection with the problem the Sauber
team experienced on the engine front at the last race, which we
believe was down to an issue with electronic sensors.
Each car has eight engines it can use per driver over the season
and we plan our usage strategy around this. As a precaution, we
opted not to use the Bahrain race engines in Australia, but they
will be used in China, having concluded that they are fit for
purpose, despite what happened at the Sakhir circuit.
Marmorini also explained that the Shanghai circuit wasn’t too stressing on the engines, which is why they put it in:
I would describe it as medium load. It features a very long
straight, but nothing that causes any particular concern for
the power unit and also, the ambient temperature is not usually
very high, which makes life easier on the engine front.
As we all know, each driver is allowed to use up to 8 engines per season, with each engine after this resulting in a grid penalty. Fernando Alonso has already used 3 engines at different points: two across the Bahrain GP weekend, and one for Australia and Malaysia, which has failed. It is unclear how many Felipe Massa has used, but I believe that he has used 2.