Sebastian Vettel says the engine failure that prevented him from starting the Bahrain Grand Prix "came as a surprise" and described the problem as "frustrating".
The German was set to start the second round of the 2016 F1 season from third place on the grid but an engine issue on the formation lap caused him to stop his car in the final sector.
Vettel was forced to watch the race from the Ferrari garage, registering the first DNS of his Formula 1 career.
"It was a very short race today, I didn’t even break a drop of sweat," he explained. "We had a failure, I saw a lot of smoke from behind and I lost power so we decided to stop the car.
"For sure it is frustrating, because in the end I am here to race. The problem came as a surprise, both for me and the whole team, as I was approaching Turn 11.
"Now we need to understand exactly the problem and learn from it. It is 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.
"We still have a lot of races ahead of us, this is going to be a long year so even if today it was not good because I couldn’t score any point, we’ll make sure that the next race goes a lot better."
