Red Bull team boss Christian Horner lamented Sebastian Vettel's misfortune at the European GP and vowed to do a "proper post-mortem".
The reigning World Champion was looking good for his second race victory of the season when he suddenly lost drive on lap 34 and was forced to park his car on the side of the track.
A forlorn Vettel admitted that the team "didn't know what the problem was" following his retirement and Horner says they will only know what caused the breakdown once they've had a look at the car.
"It's a suspected alternator," he told Sky Sports.
"We need to get the car back and have a look at all the data but it looks like a similar issue to perhaps what happened on the Lotus. But we need to get it back and have a proper post-mortem, but that's what we suspect.
"It's hard to decipher at this point exactly what the cause is so we'll get it back and we'll investigate with Renault and try and learn from it."
As for Vettel's failure to finish the race, Horner described it as "cruel, cruel luck".
"It's just another demonstration that sometimes motor racing can be cruel," he said.
"Sebastian had done everything right, he was a pit stop ahead, he'd driven immaculately, had great pace, the race was his really. Cruel, cruel luck, but we must take heart that we had a very fast car here... bitterly disappointing for Seb but he'll be back."
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