Formula One News » Renault confident of winning Mercedes battle Posted on 07/09/2010
Robert Kubica’s Belgian Grand Prix podium signalled a late-season upturn in Renault fortunes that the Enstone operation believes can carry it above season-long rival Mercedes in the constructors’ championship by the end of the season.
Kubica’s third place, behind title contenders Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber, at Spa was accompanied by a battling points finish from rookie team-mate Vitaly Petrov – his second in as many races following a seasons-best in Hungary before the summer break, and confirmed Renault’s decision to press ahead with its version of the F-duct despite the technology looking likely to be outlawed ahead of the 2011 campaign.
“It was obviously a great way to come back after the summer break,” technical director James Allison admitted of the Belgian result, “It was a very encouraging weekend and bodes well for the remaining six races.
“Robert was quick right from the start of the weekend and was able to match the pace of the leading cars. To finish on the podium was a great effort and a fitting reward for the whole team.
“Vitaly also had a strong race and did well to recover from a disappointing qualifying session. He drove aggressively, had a memorable battle with the Mercedes, and managed to pull himself up from the back of the grid to score some valuable points.”
The battle with Mercedes will be the main focus of Renault’s road to Abu Dhabi, with just 23 points separating the Three Pointed Star from the regie. While Kubica took the flag ahead of both Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher in Belgium, Petrov eventually succumbed to both in the closing stages.
“We’ve got to take four points off them in each of the remaining races,” Allison reminded, “We only managed to take three points out of their lead in Spa, but I’m hopeful that, if we can maintain our current level of competitiveness, we can start finishing ahead of Mercedes with both our cars. If we can achieve that, and race effectively with no reliability issues, we stand a good chance of catching them by the end of the year.”
Mercedes has stuggled somewhat to get its F-duct and blown diffuser upgrades working satisfactorily, and Allison is hoping that the immediate success of Renault’s take on the former can continue to push the R30 ahead of its silver rival, starting at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.
“Spa was a big weekend for us because the F-duct is a significant upgrade that we have been working very hard to get right,” Allison revealed, “We knew Spa would be a track where an F-duct would bring considerable gains, [and] I would say that it was worth more than half a second per lap.
“We started looking at F-ducts way back at the start of the year and, although the gain was evident right from the start, it was also clear that it would be a difficult device to get right. We also knew that we had a very substantial set of conventional improvements that were much easier to implement with less technical risk, so we chose to prioritise these over the F-duct. However, from as early as the Bahrain Grand Prix, we had a small group of aerodynamicists establishing what we would need to do to put the concept on our car.
“Once we had a concept that we felt had a good chance of working properly straight out of the box, we committed to manufacture. It was therefore extremely pleasing to see that the device worked correctly from the first free practice runs in Spa.
“Monza is very different from all the other circuits and so we have had to prepare a bespoke package that we will not use anywhere else. Monza has such long straights and so few corners that it requires much smaller wings than any other track.
“To add further complication, the F-duct is only a potential alternative option for Monza. Like several other teams, we are evaluating whether we can make the device work in the particular, low-downforce environment of Monza.
“It is very different from the mainstream bunch of tracks that make up the calendar but, generally speaking, the cars that are good at one track tend to be good everywhere, regardless of the downforce levels.
“The performance of the R30 in Spa therefore gives me confidence that we can compete for similarly good results at all the remaining tracks, including Monza. We will be aiming to get both cars well inside the top ten both in qualifying and the race this weekend.”
Such is the desire to reel in Mercedes before the end of the season, development work will continue on the R30 for as long as possible, even though Renault has already long started work on the yellow machine’s successor.
“By this stage of the season, any sensible team will be spending most of its time working on next year’s car, and we are no exception,” Allison confirmed, “However, we’ve still got a few more upgrades to come before the end of the season, although it’s fair to say they will not be as significant as those we were brining to the car at the start of the year.”
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