Comments on: 2008 Spanish Grand Prix notes

By: sumedh

sumedh — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:18:32 +0000

I agree with Michael.
Renault hasn’t improved as much as it is percieved to be. Do not compare him with Massa, who made a rare mistake on Saturday, otherwise a very fine qualifier. Also, The Renault engine was particularly stressed (as proved by the engine failure). Which means, that the Renault timings would be slower when they look to make their car last the race-distance
That means, Alonso was atleast 4 laps lighter than everyone, which is quite a lot.
I suspect that Toyota are still faster than Renault over race-pace.
Williams, RedBull, Renault are fairly similar

By: Toncho

Toncho — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:13:29 +0000

Pity that Piquet DNF, we would be more sure what part was fuel and what part skill. REN improvement may not seem very important but taking into account that most of the teams were introducing new pieces in Montmelo is actualy quite remarkable. Still I reckon they won’t be able to make the next step and get close to the podium (in normal race conditions).
After the race I thought MCL was not that far but looking at the data, taking into accoount SC,etc it seems like FER was just doing the minimum effort to secure P1 and P2.

By: Nico Savidge

Nico Savidge — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:45:11 +0000

You talked about the new aero on the Renault, but I noticed something on the Ferraris as well. This year (and for about half of last year) they ran with a small hole in the very tip of the front wing, and I noticed that hole is gone now. I’m guessing this is beccause of the new piece in the front wing they ran last week?

By: frecon

frecon — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:16:11 +0000

Here in Spain some F1 analysts have talked about the renault improvements. Most of them agrees about one fact:
Renault is fast with low loads of fuel. In this cases they have a pace similar to the top teams. The problem came after the pit stop. A heavy R28 was slower than its rivals.

So probably, in the future, we could see a good qualifying car (and first stint also), but after the pit stops, R28 is going to have a lot of problems.

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:26:25 +0000

I agree Keith, it’s impossible to know for sure just how good people are on a Saturday – some are unfairly criticised when they have in fact heavier on fuel, while others receive unwarranted adulation when they are in fact running artificially light.

I’m with you on having this changed so that we know for sure who is the best driver over a single lap with minimal fuel.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:11:45 +0000

Maybe, but I look at that table and I see five guys (P2-6) ranked in order of how little fuel they had on board – and Alonso had the least by a decent margin. This is why I hate race fuel qualifying – Alonso might have driven a corking lap but the fuel makes it hard to tell and open to interpretation.

By: Michael Counsell

Michael Counsell — Sun, 04 May 2008 08:53:06 +0000

I think everyone has been focussing on the pace of the fuel load of Alonso but I think a big factor was that he did an extremely good lap in qualifying whereas others perhaps did not perform as well. He was second but others were within a couple of tenths and maybe on another day he would have qualified sixth.

0.3 seconds is a decent gap but if a McLaren or BMW gets on pole they could control the pace of the race and still win. On top of that there are races coming up such as Monaco, Canada and Britain where setup and driver performance can cause differences of more than 0.3 seconds.