Renault hoping Baku slump was “just a one-off”

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

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Renault racing director Frederic Vasseur is hoping the team’s poor showing in Baku won’t be repeated at next weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.

The yellow cars qualified on the back row for F1’s first race in Azerbaijan and their highest finisher was Kevin Magnussen in 14th place. However Vasseur believes the teams performance at the Circuit de Catalunya gives a better indication of how competitive they are.

“I think Baku was just a one-off,” he said. “If you look back to Barcelona, this is more representative of where we are.”

“We need to manage the weekend well from the start to the finish, making the right strategic decisions to have an approach that is more global and consistent between Saturday and Sunday.”

The team experimented with a softer suspension set-up in qualifying but Kevin Magnussen reversed the change ahead of the race. “We suffered in the slow corners in Canada and Baku,” Vasseur admitted. “Austria should be better for a variety of reasons.”

The team’s chief technical officer Bob Bell expects the team will perform better due to the quicker corners at the Red Bull Ring.

“Austria’s much more in the RS16’s comfort zone,” he said. “We left the Barcelona test feeling quite positive, and since then we’ve added the positive step of the B specification engine, but the circuits we’ve visited subsequently have really caused our progress to falter. That’s something we must address.”

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    6 comments on “Renault hoping Baku slump was “just a one-off””

    1. Matthew Abbott
      24th June 2016, 15:03

      Slump … I’d call it a 2016 Slump…

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      24th June 2016, 16:00

      Hoping =not= Thinking

    3. With the money Renault have I can’t believe they are at the very back not even fighting midpack.

      1. The car was designed by Genii at a time where there was no money. No surprise it’s rubbish.
        It’s better to write this year off and use the money for next year.

        1. And also designed for a different engine.

        2. Actually it wasn’t even designed. It’s just last years car with a few last minute changes to fit the new engine and some changes to aerodynamics in-frond so the airflow won’t be a complete mess since they changed the back because of the engine.
          Nothing more than that really.

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