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Articles by Darren Galpin
| Renault – An enigma wrapped up in a conundrum - Sun 30th Jul 2006 |
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Renault are an enigma wrapped up in a conundrum. They were the class act at the beginning of the year, but now things are not going to plan. They are losing skirmishes with the FIA, and are in danger of falling down the slippery slope to ultimate championship defeat, and as a result are looking for someone to blame. There was an open attempt to blame the tyres, but there’s far more to it than that.
Renault have been using a mass-damper system on their cars this year, but for the German Grand Prix the FIA requested that it was removed, as it was a moveable system which affected the aerodynamics. That’s a bit like saying that the suspension is a moveable aerodynamic device – the suspension goes up and down after all, and helps to keep the car level, but suspension isn’t banned. It works by hanging a weight between two springs – as the car hits a bump, inertia delays the weight from moving up in sympathy, and the springs help to dampen the oscillations that do result. This inertia with the weight helps to keep the nose from moving around so much. However, there are interesting questions concerning what happens with these systems in the event of a crash. You now have a large sprung mass which can move around on impact – what happens if it moves violently sideways and collides with a bulkhead? This wouldn’t be tested for properly in the FIA mandated impact tests, so is potentially more dangerous. There was still some arguments to be had over this, and Renault may get the system back for next weekend’s Hungarian GP.
So how would they do in qualifying with the system missing? Fifth and seventh was the answer, but with Fisichella ahead of Alonso. Shades of Indianapolis perhaps. Kimi Räikkönen was on pole, followed by Michael Schumacher, Felipe Massa and Jenson Button. Yes, you read that right – a Honda was in the top four. They had a new spec engine for the weekend, but even given that, something clicked this weekend. It wasn’t down just to luck.
From the start the Ferrari’s disappeared from view, and Renault briefly decided to make a race of it, with both of them passing Button into the first corner. But they flattered to deceive – Button dispatched both of them within two laps. And then they proceeded to go backwards, Alonso with the faster backwards velocity.
Come the final pitstops, Renault appeared to try and make a statement, by parking the tyres from both Fisichella and Alonso in open view at the back of the team garage – they had had big lumps of rubber ripped from them, probably due to excessive blistering. If it was an attempt to blame Michelin, then there was an element of toys being thrown from the pram being shown. After all, they weren’t the only team on Michelin’s. Both McLaren and Honda were running Michelin’s, and they were both in front of Renault. Renault get to choose the compound which suits their car better on the Friday, and have the same choices as everyone else. They simply got it wrong given the set-up of their car, and are feeling the pressure as the championship lead is whittled away.
What must be all the more perplexing was the performance of their drivers. Fisichella outqualified Alonso again, and outraced him in the first half of the race. In the second half Alonso got ahead, but that may have been down to closet team orders to ensure the maximum points haul for Alonso. Alonso then managed to run wide coming into the stadium section, running completely off the track – it could have been a ruinous mistake, but luck was with him and he regained the track, Fisichella acting as his tail gunner. Renault may have been off colour, but that doesn’t really explain Alonso’s performance. When he’s on it, he can make Fisichella look distinctly ordinary, but this is the second recent race in which Fisichella had the upper hand, and Alonso also made quite a basic mistake. Is he feeling the pressure? One dodgy performance might be put down to bad luck, but two? It was not the performance of someone who is meant to be the heir to Schumacher.
And the others? Barrichello was doing reasonably well until his engine barfed its innards, but he was still a pit-stop worth of time behind Button when he bit the dust. Mark Webber was doing particularly well in his Williams, having gone for a one-stop strategy, and was up to fourth when his engine let go again. It was a promising performance for Williams given their recent efforts, but it was still ultimately blighted by mechanical failure. Cosworth are doing well given their resources, but doing well isn’t enough in F1, and Williams have signed a three year deal with Toyota for engines from 2007. There won’t be many happy faces in the Toyota boardroom if Williams manage to consistently beat their own team with a smaller budget.
But what really helped to make a difference was the circuit. It may be an emasculated bastardisation of its former self, but it features a slow corner onto a long straight which goes into a wide hairpin, which means that cars can follow each other without aerodynamics being the limiting factor. If the FIA won’t sort out the aerodynamic regulations to allow better racing, then could they at least please mandate that all circuits have to have some sort of similar configuration to allow overtaking to take place? There may not have been huge amounts of overtaking due to Bridgestone being better than Michelin, but at least you knew that it was possible, and thus the positions of the cars wasn’t fixed forever. The race was all the better for that.
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