What is going on at Renault?

[jens]

Well. The reigning World Champion is in trouble. Some say that Honda is the biggest embarrasement of the season, but I think Renault is a strong rival to them for that "title" and their fall has been even deeper taking into account that at which position they have been in previous years. Last year Renault finished 1-2 in Malaysia with Fisi scoring his last (will it stay his last?) win in F1:
But now Fisi has already said that Renault is not going to win any races this season in "normal" circumstances:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57903

Before Malaysia some expected Renault to close the gap on the first ones, but in reality it has become worse. Renault was unable to match even Rosberg's Williams and Fisichella barely managed to beat Toyota. What is going on? There have to be several factors, also besides so-called Alonso effect. Some point out that the Michelin-Renault co-operation was very strong and by now they have lost it. But what else? Renault has the smallest budget among the factory teams. Maybe now it's time, when it begins to become a disadvantage? Arguably Renault's budget for this season is even smaller than in previous years that has made their task to compete against other factories even tougher.

Btw, I think there is an interesting parallel with Renault's F1 history. Recall what happened to Renault after Prost had left the team after 1983. The team had been in title contention and after that they started dramatically dropping backwards and their F1 campaign ended ingloriously after 1985. Maybe we are going to see a similar scenario again? In Prost's role is now Alonso and again there aren't many other major changes besides their #1 leaving the team. And again Renault has dropped significantly backwards. In 2005 Carlos Ghosn become the chief executive of Renault and Nissan Motors and he is said not to be very interested in motorsports. In 2005 he said about leaving F1: "As long as we are winning, then there isn't any problem." But now Renault is not winning any more. Is Renault - like in the mid-80s - again unable to dig out of the hole and leaves F1 with disappointment after for example 2008?

[andreag]

Totally right. Good analysis. :up:

[F1boat]

Sh1t happens even to the best. Look Ferrari in 2005 or McLaren last year. They might fall, but they might strike back as well.

[Erki]

Renault to sportscars - yes, that would do it. *drool* :)

[Ian McC]

Tyres and drivers mainly I would think

[philipbain]

It's all down to the tyres really, and the fact that Fisi simply isnt team leader material. Reanult over the past few seasons have always favoured a heavy weight bias towards the rear of the car (never less than 45:55 front to rear when they were running Michelins) which worked the Michelin tyres well and fundementally dictated how the car worked. Then to go from this to the Bridgestone tyres which require a much more even weight distribution is a quite fundemental change which will take a lot more than just moving the ballast around to solve as the dynamics of the whole car were previously based on this heavilly rear biased distribution. As Flav said - as soon as everyone put bridgestones onto last year's cars McLaren were immediately quciker than Renault

[stevewf1]

The Alonso factor has had a huge effect, they were always punching above their weight the last two seasons and it is a measure of how good Alonso is to win two titles with them. They are a much smaller team than McLaren and Ferrari and that is why Alonso left as he knew long term success lay elsewhere. Fisi simply isnt good enough to lead a world champion team, Flavio should have put Webber in one of those cars as he seems a good team player, and would at least qualify that Renault on the front 3 rows of the grid.

[jens]

Fisi simply isnt good enough to lead a world champion team, Flavio should have put Webber in one of those cars as he seems a good team player, and would at least qualify that Renault on the front 3 rows of the grid.

Jaguar, Williams and now Red Bull periods do not indicate that assumption that Webber should be a good team player.

[jens]

By the way, to continue with the thread - I presume that Sakhir would be a difficult event for Renault. Why?

In Fisi's case there has been much discussion that how much his drive reflects Renault's true form. Well, Albert Park and Sepang suit Fisi quite well, so I suppose that on those circuits he took practically maximum out of the car. But it's a different story at Sakhir!

In 2004 he was struggling there, making a spin and getting beaten by Massa.
Both in 2005 and 2006 he also lacked of speed. Well, he had mechanical problems on both occasions, but he lacked of speed already in qualifying, being lucky to get into Top10 and was fighting for the last points, before problems started affecting his performance in the race.

I suppose that Fisi should be happy if he manages to score any points at Sakhir and Heikki might have a good chance to beat the Italian for the first time this season. Sakhir might be a chance for Toyota-powered cars to close the gap on Renault.

[Mikeall]

The Alonso factor has had a huge effect, they were always punching above their weight the last two seasons and it is a measure of how good Alonso is to win two titles with them. They are a much smaller team than McLaren and Ferrari and that is why Alonso left as he knew long term success lay elsewhere. Fisi simply isnt good enough to lead a world champion team, Flavio should have put Webber in one of those cars as he seems a good team player, and would at least qualify that Renault on the front 3 rows of the grid.

Webber seems to be a bit like Fisi in that he can be really fast at some races he likes anonymous at others and never quite gets the results he should. Both of them can still work on it.

This season Fisichella has got the maximum out of both races and has beaten everyone he should and some cars he shouldn't have based on qualifying pace whereas Webber has for whatever reason has not maximised his chances. Having said that what would Alonso have done driving a Renault or even a Red Bull Renault.

[Garry Walker]

The Alonso factor has had a huge effect, they were always punching above their weight the last two seasons and it is a measure of how good Alonso is to win two titles with them. They are a much smaller team than McLaren and Ferrari and that is why Alonso left as he knew long term success lay elsewhere. Fisi simply isnt good enough to lead a world champion team, Flavio should have put Webber in one of those cars as he seems a good team player, and would at least qualify that Renault on the front 3 rows of the grid.

The problem for Renault isnt that Alonso left. The car simply sucks, and there is nothing a driver can do about that

[Ranger]

The problem for Renault isnt that Alonso left. The car simply sucks, and there is nothing a driver can do about that

Really? Considering Fisi usually finished 5th or 6th when Alonso won races at Renault, I would say the lack of a champion driver has a fair bit to do with it.

[Hawkmoon]

I think you can look at '95/'96 for an indication as to why Renault are struggling. In '95 Schumacher took a comfortable championship win in the Benetton. He leaves for Ferrari in '96 and Benetton, with a car designed by the same people who designed the '94 and '95 title winning cars, win one race all season and never look like getting near the championship.

In '06 Alonso took the championship win in the Renault. He leaves for McLaren in '07 and Renault, with a car designed by the same people who designed the '05 and '06 title winning cars, ..... to be continued.

Renault were built around Alonso, just as Benetton were in the 1990's. around Schumacher. They have lost their focal point, just as they did in '96 with Schumacher's departure. Their problem is that neither Fisichella nor Kovalainen appear to be able to be an adequate replacement for the Spaniard. No surprise there. Alesi and Berger were never going to fill Schumi's shoes either.

The mistake they made was to keep Fisichella for '06. They should have put Kovalainen in the car alongside Alonso and let him learn the ropes before taking over the team leadership in '07. Throw in a couple of rule changes that they haven't been able to adapt to all that well, and you have a team fighting with Toyotas for 8th place instead of fighting with Ferraris and McLarens for 1st.

Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing and makes everybody sound like a genius, but I bet that if Kovalainen was in his second season and partnered with a fast, hard working veteran like Webber, then Renault would be much closer to the front than they are know.

[F1boat]

Really? Considering Fisi usually finished 5th or 6th when Alonso won races at Renault, I would say the lack of a champion driver has a fair bit to do with it.

Alonso would have fought for a podium with this Renault IMO, but not for the win.

[Rudy Tamasz]

I think this can actually be some kind of renaissance for Fisi. He's always been good at driving bad cars very hard and getting decent results. It's the good cars that he didn't know what to do with.

[Ranger]

I think this can actually be some kind of renaissance for Fisi. He's always been good at driving bad cars very hard and getting decent results. It's the good cars that he didn't know what to do with.

Then we'll never know how fast the Renault is.

He'll drive a crap car to a minor points position in the same way he'll drive a championship winning car to a minor points position.

[jas123f1]

Well. The reigning World Champion is in trouble. Some say that Honda is the biggest embarrasement of the season, but I think Renault is a strong rival to them for that "title" and their fall has been even deeper taking into account that at which position they have been in previous years. Last year Renault finished 1-2 in Malaysia with Fisi scoring his last (will it stay his last?) win in F1:
But now Fisi has already said that Renault is not going to win any races this season in "normal" circumstances:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57903

Before Malaysia some expected Renault to close the gap on the first ones, but in reality it has become worse. Renault was unable to match even Rosberg's Williams and Fisichella barely managed to beat Toyota. What is going on? There have to be several factors, also besides so-called Alonso effect. Some point out that the Michelin-Renault co-operation was very strong and by now they have lost it. But what else? Renault has the smallest budget among the factory teams. Maybe now it's time, when it begins to become a disadvantage? Arguably Renault's budget for this season is even smaller than in previous years that has made their task to compete against other factories even tougher.

Btw, I think there is an interesting parallel with Renault's F1 history. Recall what happened to Renault after Prost had left the team after 1983. The team had been in title contention and after that they started dramatically dropping backwards and their F1 campaign ended ingloriously after 1985. Maybe we are going to see a similar scenario again? In Prost's role is now Alonso and again there aren't many other major changes besides their #1 leaving the team. And again Renault has dropped significantly backwards. In 2005 Carlos Ghosn become the chief executive of Renault and Nissan Motors and he is said not to be very interested in motorsports. In 2005 he said about leaving F1: "As long as we are winning, then there isn't any problem." But now Renault is not winning any more. Is Renault - like in the mid-80s - again unable to dig out of the hole and leaves F1 with disappointment after for example 2008?

It looks not better than; that you are right when analysing Renault capacity, however at the moment the team is not as many was waiting after preseason testing.
I think the problem is (partly) that the team hasn’t any top driver at the moment, after Alonso left them for McLaren. And probably the last year’s car was developed most for Alonso (like he wanted it) and it’s not that easy to know what you have to change in a "top car" so it fits better to an other driver (I suppose that Fisi is the driver who has taking the place as first driver in the team after Alonso). And as you mentioned are tyres playing to the car setup, maybe more than we understand. So it looks not that easy for them and I’m sure they are thinking how to solve the problems in the long terms. If Kova are getting better and pushing Fisi from his first driver place (as many are waiting) maybe the team will put their recourses on him? The problem for Kova has been it 1,5 years long pause he had without competitions and a car which hasn’t been that good as he was waiting (which made him to push too hard in Melbourne and making many mistakes) therefore i think we can see much better results of him in the close future, perhaps he will beat Fisi all ready in Bahrain a track he knows better than Melbourne or Sepang. It should be a big loss for F1 if Renault decides to leave…

[raphael123]

Obviously the loss of Alonso can contribute to maybe half a second max! But not the 1-2sec a lap slower they are. He's good, he's the best, but not even the best can make that much of a difference!

I think one reason why they have failed to deliver, apart from the Alonso departure, and tyres, which no one has mentioned is; the fact they are on a tiny budget in comparison to mclaren and ferrari. this on top of the fact they pushed tooth and nail until the final race of the season to secure the title and the loss of their mass dampers, meant all their focus went on 2006 rather than developing the 2007 car. they are not like mclaren and ferrari where they can put 100% focus on this years challenger, without compromising the development of next seasons car.

This is definately showing in this years results so far!

[ArrowsFA1]

Pat Symonds -
"We are well aware that something is badly wrong, but we don't know what yet, even though we've already eliminated some of the possibilities."
When asked whether the aero impact of the wider Bridgestone tyres could be a factor, Symonds said: "I suspect that this may end up having some significance when we do find the answers.
"It is a fact that we did lose aero performance when we fitted these tyres to the 2006 car. Also, in the past, when there was more freedom of what you could do with tyres, we used to do lots of wind tunnel testing of tyres - and that's now closed off.
"We pulled that loss back but perhaps in doing so we have fallen back in other areas. I look at the Honda and wonder if it is not exactly the same thing.
"After Brazil last year we went to Jerez to test. I don't think there's much doubt that our 2006 car was faster than McLaren's 2006 car. Yet when we went to the Jerez test on the Bridgestones, suddenly the 2006 McLaren was faster than the 2006 Renault."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57963

Jarno Trulli -
"When you change the tyres, consequently the aerodynamic of the car changes," he said. "Look at Renault, they have lost out a lot while McLaren have gained a little bit. The only one who didn't change was Ferrari. Aerodynamically, that is the first thing, and everything else is related."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57968

[ioan]

Well Renault and Honda should maybe collaborate to find out what is wrong with their cars.
No, wait, Spyker would go to arbitration against it too and would argue that it's not fair, after all they have a chance to beat Honda! :D

[ArrowsFA1]

Well Renault and Honda should maybe collaborate to find out what is wrong with their cars.
Or perhaps Bridgestone should collaborate with them more effectively to help find solutions.

[ioan]

Or perhaps Bridgestone should collaborate with them more effectively to help find solutions.

Let's see, this year all of them get the same tires, so I don't see why Bridgestone should collaborate more with them than with Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Williams and other teams that got things right?
It would be unfair isn't it?!

[ArrowsFA1]

A tyre supplier favouring one team over others would be unfair, particularly as there is now only one supplier, but as the switch to Bridgestone appears to have affected one or two teams more severely than other teams then that might be something the tyre company could help with.

[ioan]

A tyre supplier favouring one team over others would be unfair, particularly as there is now only one supplier, but as the switch to Bridgestone appears to have affected one or two teams more severely than other teams then that might be something the tyre company could help with.

I don't think that way. If Bridgestone start changing tire construction to help Honda and Renault out of trouble than it would be the start of a huge row in F1, and rightly so. Others were able to go from Michelin to Bridgestone easily, so it is not that difficult to get it right.

Renault's problem isn't Alonso's departure as some are so willing to believe, it is the end of their very very close relationship with Michelin.
Michelin were so closely working with Renault that they jointly developed their suspension. The car and the tires were like twin brothers. Renault simply weren't able to design the car as others.

I know hindsight is a beautiful thing but I believe that Renault, Honda and a few other ex Michelin runners might regret the coup they did in US in 2005, after all that is what opened the Michelin vs FIA row that ended with Michelin chickening out 1 season earlier.

[aryan]

A tyre supplier favouring one team over others would be unfair, particularly as there is now only one supplier, but as the switch to Bridgestone appears to have affected one or two teams more severely than other teams then that might be something the tyre company could help with.

I don't think Bridgestone should do anything to accommodate these teams which didn't get it right during the switch. If teams like McLaren have been able to design a proper chassis with the Bridgies, then other teams should have done the same.

Any change Bridgstone makes to help the likes of Rnault and Honda which might have had a hard switch, will adversely disadvantage other teams, and it wouldn't be fair.

[ArrowsFA1]

I don't think Bridgestone should do anything to accommodate these teams which didn't get it right during the switch.
I agree in the sense that I'm not suggesting Bridgestone favour any team over another. Obviously that cannot happen. However, as part of the normal exchange of information between team and tyre supplier they will be working on the problem.

[ioan]

However, as part of the normal exchange of information between team and tyre supplier they will be working on the problem.

Well I'm sure they are doing exactly that.