Red Bull Racing has determined the cause of Sebastian Vettel's loss of power in the latter third of this afternoon's Bahrain Grand Prix following post-race inspections. Initial reports from the team stated that the German had suffered an exhaust failure, but in fact his woes have been traced to a faulty spark plug.

Vettel held a two-second lead on lap 32 before the problem began manifesting itself, and within three laps he had already dropped to third. He subsequently lost another place to McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, but despite intense pressure from Mercedes' Nico Rosberg in the final laps he managed to hang on to a valuable fourth place and score 12 points.

Last year, Vettel's championship campaign was hugely compromised by failures of his Renault engine, with the French manufacturer now understood to have written to the FIA to upgrade their V8 for reliability purposes.