RB team principal Laurent Mekies found his team's double DNF a tough pill to swallow - especially with Daniel Ricciardo well-placed to end his pointless streak.
The Australian hasn't scored a point for the team yet this season and his place is under pressure as a result. He has now failed to finish in the top 10 in his last eight races - a barren run stretching back to last season.
In fact, he has scored points just once since returning to the grid last July. And a decent chance to end that improve that record at the Chinese Grand Prix was ended when Lance Stroll ploughed into the back of his RB while behind the safety car.
Just moments later, his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda was spun around as a consequence of Kevin Magnussen's lunge up the inside of a corner. Those separate incidents caused terminal damage to both RB cars and so they failed to finish the race - leaving a sour taste in boss Mekies' mouth.
The Frenchman told RacingNews365: "It is super disappointing because you get both your cars taken out of the race in separate incidents by competitors [within] one minute. So it is very disappointing. We feel we had everything to fight for that P10. We were in that fight.
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"Daniel was producing a strong drive until then - just before the safety car, he was actually attacking Lewis [Hamilton]. We feel we were in good shape to fight with Nico [Hulkenberg] for that position. It's the way it is. We've lost that opportunity through no fault of our drivers. So we know we have to take it on the chin and move forward.
"For sure, it's difficult to swallow but we need to look at the positives. The positives are that once again here, we had time to fight for the P10. And every weekend, it's a fight for that last half-a-tenth to be in that fight or not. And we were here as well, this weekend.
"We had started in a slower fashion on Friday but somehow we managed to recover through the weekend and to be with the right pace to fight for that point. So that's the positive."
And it bodes well for Ricciardo who desperately needs some good results to save his F1 career. Red Bull don't look likely to rush to replace him any time soon, but reserve driver Liam Lawson is primed and ready to go should the team decide to make a change.
And Red Bull could be forced to act over fear of losing the Kiwi to a rival, as Helmut Marko admitted: "We obviously have in Liam Lawson as reserve driver a strong driver in the team, who is contractually free to race for another team if he doesn't get a seat with us in 2025. In this regard it would of course be exciting for us if we could see him already in F1 this year, to give ourselves an even clearer picture."
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