Sainz to take on new MGU-K in Bahrain

McLaren has been forced to change Carlos Sainz's MGU-K for the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.

Sainz retired from the season-opening race in Melbourne after a fire sprouted at the rear of his car early on in the race.

The incident left question marks lingering over the reliability of the Renault power unit, which has been weak in recent years. Sainz called on Renault to make gains, saying the reliability is a "weak point" of the McLaren MCL34.

"It felt like we are getting good power in both conditions, race and qualifying, our top speed last year was around 10 to 12 kph down and this year we are only two or three kph down, partly down to downforce but also as the engine has improved.

"Unfortunately, reliability, I don’t mind if the speed is good but if we cannot get through lap 11 of the race that is not good. Hopefully we can improve."

When asked if the MGU-K was damaged beyond repair, Sainz replied: "Yes. Hopefully they have been looking at it for the past few days and they have found out, hopefully, the cause of the issue so we can put some solutions in place for this race.

"If they work or not we will wait and see but it is true we have had a couple of failures during testing so it is a weak point of the car and we need to keep working on it to make sure we don’t throw any more points in the bin because we threw a couple of them away in Australia."

However, Sainz is encouraged by the MCL34, saying that there are no major concerns surrounding its pace.

"I think the car has no weaknesses apart from the basic ones compared to the top teams. The power unit is strong in straight line and we’ve done our steps forward so I welcome that [but] Lap 11 of race one is not good enough."