The Red Bull team have confirmed that Sebastian Vettel's retirement while he was leading the Australian Grand Prix was down to the remarkably banal reason of a 'vibrating wheel nut' damaging a front wheel mounting on his RB6 car.
Vettel was pitched into the gravel on lap 26 after leading the race from the very start with what was originally reported as a suspected brake failure.
It meant that for the second race in a row, Vettel had lost a probable win with a reliability issue with his car.
And although the brakes were originally highlighted as the most probable cause, the team later confirmed a different, and more frustratingly minor car failure.
Auto Motor und Sport reported that the team confirmed the failure was due to the left front wheel nut on the RB6 machine working loose and damaging the wheel mounting, which then caused Vettel to spin into the gravel trap at turn 13.
The failure was discovered following a thorough inspection of Vettel's car, and follows Vettel dropping from 1st to 4th in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix following a spark plug failure within his Renault engine.
"In 6000 kilometres of testing nothing like this happened," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner admitted after the reason came to light.
Vettel himself expressed frustration over his early-season issues, saying that: "Of course it is annoying. Yet another defect. I could be going to Malaysia with 50 points."
Meanwhile, new speculation in Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper suggested that work is already underway in the Red Bull company to bring Kimi Raikkonen back into the sport in 2011, as a replacement for Mark Webber, who is out of contract at the end of the current season.
Raikkonen is currently taking a sabbatical year from the sport after losing his Ferrari drive at the end of 2009, but is racing for the Red Bull-backed Citroen Junior team in the World Rally Championship in 2010.
Sebastian Vettel, a close friend of Raikkonen, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that: "I don't know what the team is planning. And in the end, it is of course Kimi's decision. He needs to see how he feels."
Speaking about the prospect of bringing Raikkonen back into Formula One next season earlier this year, Horner admitted that the rumour was an "interesting idea".
However, this weekend in Melbourne, Horner offered his support for both of his current drivers, after Lewis Hamilton suggested that he felt that Webber was preparing to retire at the end of the season.
"We are very happy with our drivers. Mark is driving very well, and he is not old, as Michael has demonstrated," Horner said.
"The average age [of F1 drivers] has dropped, but as long as Mark is motivated, competitive and quick, I don't think that he has any thoughts of stopping just yet."
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