Renault: “Three years to be competitive”

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In the round-up: Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn expects it will take his team until 2018 to become competitive again in F1.

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Comment of the day

Alonso scored Renault’s last win as a team at Fuji in 2008
Renault sticking with F1 is rare and welcome good news:

Renault’s return as a works team is a real victory for F1. It’s not as if exiting F1 wasn’t a viable option for Renault: given its successful Formula E team, rumours surrounding the Renaultsport R.S. 01 being converted into a factory-supported LM-GTE car, and with Citroen’s exit heralding an excellent opportunity to build a WRC car, Renault didn’t need F1 to have a motorsports presence.

However instead of exiting the sport with its tail between its legs, and with a fracas with its former dream team partner as its parting legacy, Ghosn and his shareholders have chosen to attempt to redress the form of the past two years. I respect that, and consider it a shining endorsement of the F1 commercial platform.
@William-brierty

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On this day in F1

Three years ago today the FIA dropped its most recent plan to reduce downforce in F1 cars which was intended to come into force in 2014. It now intends to increase downforce to improve lap times in 2017.

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Keith Collantine
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36 comments on “Renault: “Three years to be competitive””

  1. Alonso was also in contention for a win in 2009 but, due to a puncture or something, lost the race. I think it was Hungary.
    Just one of the many great (not for him) stories from the awesome year of 2009…

    1. Actually he was on a three stop strategy on that race (that’s the reason he was on pole) and his chance of winning was very small. But after the first stop a wheel nut (i think that was the issue) was not properly secured and he retired from the race.

    2. Alas, the problem at Hungary was he left the pits with a loose wheel which detached around the lap.

      The incident gained notoriety because of Herny Surtees death a week earlier to a lose wheel hitting him on the head.

      1. he had also pitted earlier due to another problem with engine, so was a lot slower then he should of been and pitted earlier. So he wasn’t going to win anyway but we never saw his true pace.

      2. It was also the race in which Felipe Massa was hit but a loose screw from Barrichello’s car and was badly injured (and never really regained his former self).

  2. Is Hamilton meeting up with the BBC everyday at the minute or are they just running fluff news pieces covering topics that have already been published because they know it will bring clicks through?

    I’m expecting tomorrow a piece about how this has been the best year of his life and he doesn’t think that living the party lifestyle has compromised his on track performance. You heard it here first folks if the BBC does, F1Fanatic world exclusive! Eat your heart out Eddie Jordan.

    1. I imagine they have been doing a feature on him for one or more year-end shows (Sports Personality, F1 highlights or similar). The drip-feeding of the pieces is just the BBC hyping their shows.

      1. @ians they have indeed done an interview with him for their 2015 highlights show and as you say, they’re drip feeding bits out from it before it airs on Dec 12th.

  3. Let’s hope winning 1 or a few races will be enough for Renault and that they don’t want to become a championship contender in 3 years as that is always a hard one in F1.

    But they know being in F1 is great exposure .. and that is money! .. fingers crosed, but I must say
    I’m really happy they’re back as a full team!

  4. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
    5th December 2015, 1:32

    Was not Renault’s own fault to choose infiniti instead of promoting themselves on RedBull cars during their WCC years? I mean, in the photo history published yesterday, the brand “Renault” was clearly visible in all their other cars, while they were nowhere in Red Bull cars, not even on the racing suits.

    1. @omarr-pepper Fair point. Renault tried to propel Nissan’s luxury brand, the purple and the big badge on the side were visible, It could have been a Renault badge. RB isn’t shy of partnering with affordable brands (rauch, geox, singha, at&t) but RB is often associated with high value products (pepe jeans, Infiniti and now TAG-Heuer), these are the brands that pop-up although a can of Red Bull is not that expensive. Definitely Renault’s own doing, the team often mentioned them as per contract, also when things didn’t went as planned as not per contract.

      1. A can of red bull compared to other soft drinks and energy drinks is very very expensive. In India at least.

        1. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
          5th December 2015, 10:43

          Maybe cheap means common people can afford it, while not everybody can afford a whisky or a Swiss watch.

    2. With the European (re-)launch of Infiniti, the dismal sales of the Q50, and the impending launch of the Q30 aimed at a younger market, it makes a lot of sense for Renault to have used the Infiniti brand on the RBR cars. RB has a strong image of youth culture and extreme sports, and that’s the sort of image that Renault want to tie to Infiniti and the Q30, as it’s more or less a rival to things like the BMW Mini and a European equivalent to Toyota’s Scion brand.

      The other brand that Renault had an interest in promoting was Alpine, due to the oft-rumoured Alpine / Caterham sportscar project that seems to have faded away lately. They did that via the Alpine A450 LMP2 rebranding through Nissan’s engine supply links, tying into Alpine’s Le Mans history and reminding people of the marque and their sporting credentials.

      Renault itself hasn’t really had any sporting models to promote for a long time, hence why cars like the R26.R were ultimately just hatchbacks and a bit of a waste of an F1 tie-in. I can certainly see why they’d use the F1 branding as a chance to promote their attempted ‘lifestyle’ marque of Infiniti, but I can also agree that it is slightly disingenous to complain about the lack of exposure Renault got via RBR when they’re actively pushing other names.

  5. Somehow I am getting this Strange feeling that Renault F1 team will win a WDC or WCC before McLaren Honda .

  6. 2 First links don’t match. The first states

    We’ll also carry on developing our activity as an engine supplier, but only in accordance with the interests of our works team.

    The other states Renault-Ilmor shall supply all teams with their PU.. So if RB went for unbranded to give them the freedom to develop the PU via themselves and Ilmor how can someone suggest Renault has finally recognised they have a problem in house and so are asking for Ilmor’s guidance?

    1. There is only one homologated engine permitted and it will be Renault. The TAG derivative is a valve cover badge exercise no more and Ilmor is going to be a sub contractor supplying goods and/or services. There is no separate development path available to them.

      Mario Ilien has unparalled experience in the combustion/valve area and that’s where I would think he would be deployed, but as a sub contractor. It’s not so much Renault has a problem, it is that Mario is the recognised world leader. I think it shows that Renault are serious, because he wouldn’t be cheap.

  7. Just one of the many great (not for him) stories from the awesome year of 2009…

    I recently re-watched Nurburgring 2009

    Although overtaking was fairly limited, I cannot describe enough how much I enjoyed that race. After experiencing the second half of 2013, 2014, and now 2015 (basically 2.5 years of one team dominating); the prospect of so many cars being so evenly matched on raw pace itself was very intriguing.

    Red Bull were slightly ahead (but by no means dominant); closely followed by a very tight and evenly matched pack of Ferrari, Williams, Brawn, McLaren, and even Force India.

    Now compare that to a 2015 race. The gaps between the cars are night and day; and a few DRS-assisted overtakes in the midfield does not make the race any more exciting.

    1. @kingshark And what’s weird is that 2009 was a year of major rule changes. Under totally different regs (except the engines), both 2008 and 2009 had no team winning more than half of the season’s races, they both had plenty of winning drivers (7 and 6) and plenty of drivers on the podium (14 and 13). Nowadays we’ve had 2013 with 5 winners (a lopsided score of 13-2-2-1-1), but only 8 drivers (from the same 4 teams) get on the podium. 2014 and 2015 had 10 on the podium which is fair, but just 3 winners.

  8. …how many more Hamilton articles? Does the motorsport media really have nothing better to do than take up all the guy’s spare time? Are there really not enough other, more interesting stories to fill the column inches with?

    Then again, the only international motorsport running this time of year is Formula E, so…

    (Yes, I know this site is an aggregator, collecting what others publish)

    1. @raceprouk

      an aggregator

      Only as far as the round-up is concerned.

  9. “Evidence shows that in the majority of cases radical innovation pays off in years of regulation stability, but it backfires in years of radical regulation change,” Dr Aversa said.

    “In 2016 moderate F1 rule changes mean radical innovation will be critical for winning, but in the following year, if radical rule changes are confirmed, teams with conservative approaches toward innovation will outperform more teams with extreme innovation efforts.”

    Weird, I thought the opposite was true.

  10. Carlos Ghosn also said that neither Palmer nor Maldonado is actually 100% confirmed for next season. In January there will be big strategy meetings where they will decide on many things including drivers. So here’s hoping the paydrivers get jettisoned.

    1. Considering Palmer is a GP2 Championship wining driver, I think he should at least be given a decent chance to prove himself.

  11. About World Championship awards… I thought congratulations to Verstappen for all the awards he’s got, but the personality award? Personality of the Year was so obviously Vettel… and from what I’ve seen over the Internet, I’m not the only one who thinks this. I think it’s quite obvious.

    1. Yep. That’s what I thought as well.

  12. Well, it took Renault three years to start winning races in their first Formula One stint, but four years to start winning in their second stint (including the 2000 and 2001 seasons where they ran under the Benetton name).

    So based on that I think three years is a reasonable timeframe. First of all though, they need to build a power unit properly, as that has seemed to be such an important factor over the last two years.

  13. Dennis and Horner are just fantastic on that picture from the Sky’s article. That would make a great caption competition.

  14. This comment from Dennis is interesting: “Dennis explained that Honda’s suppliers – particularly of the electronic ERS components that are part of F1’s complex hybrid engines – aren’t equipped to deal with what would effectively have been an immediate doubling of demand.”

    McLaren and Honda were telling that they are using some never-before-used technologies. Could this be it? Some new type of super-caps? They did have problems with ERS discharge – maybe not yet performing as well as regular Lithium batteris all other teams are using?

    Regular ERS is probably the least complex part of the power drain – Lithium batteries – controller – brushless 3-phase electric motor/generator (and gearing).

    1. Interesting thought @f1lauri

  15. If we look at past instances to get an idea of the challenge Renault face becoming competitive I’ll start with Red Bull.

    They entered the sport in 2005 also taking over a team towards the bottom end of the grid and enjoyed relatively stable aero rules until 2009, yet in those 4 years amassed no wins. However they did clearly have their eyes on those rule changes and by their 5th year were genuinely competitive and took the title in the 6th year.

    Mercedes entered the sport in 2010, even though Brawn had just taken both championships it had been as a result of work done leading up to 2009, the state the team had been in before the takeover with staff losses and lack of development makes them a comparable comparison to Lotus. They won a race in their 3rd year, became consistently competitive in their 3rd and took the title in their 4th year having clearly had their eye on the upcoming aero rule changes.

    Both Red Bull and Mercedes competitiveness coincided both with rule changes, and also them taking on their eventual world championship winning drivers in Vettel and Hamilton. They also had far bigger budgets than the amount Renault has pledged.

    Next year obviously will see stable rules, and I think the best they can hope for is maintaining consistent positioning of around 6th or 7th in the constructors. Then there is the rule upheaval for 2017. But looking at Red Bull and Mercedes past conquests as a result of rule changes I don’t think that is enough time for them to position themselves to take advantage of it and along with Haas I think they will be the team to be really hurt by it if anything.

    1. did you forget Renault won the championship in 2005 and 2006 with Alonso???

    2. “and took the title in their 4th year having clearly had their eye on the upcoming aero rule changes” NO it was the engine regs that made them win., it was proven at many tracks that Red Bull still had the best aero package, but were let down by an underpowered engine.

  16. It is understood Ilmor will be a contractor to Renault Sport F1, aiding development of the power unit and have a more structured and consistent involvement with the project.

    I am pleased there has been some sort of announcement along these lines, it suggests some there is an agreement regarding collaboration between the two companies.
    The last line of that article was interesting:

    With regards the Red Bull project, it is understood Renault will supply the team with the same engine as its works outfit.

    One would expect this with the homologation rules, but it does at least suggest that Red Bull won’t be running their own independently designed engine, partly built with Renault components.
    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122130

  17. The Guardian today reports on the grim plight of journalists in Azerbaijan – at least those who dare mock the government:
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/dec/05/azerbaijan-press-freedom-emin-milli-bloggers

    We have seen the depths to which football and athletics have sunk. It seems F1 is no better – just hasn’t been caught yet.

  18. I predict very painful years for Renault. I don’t see how they can be competitive, their chassis is not great, and they cant go from 6th best chassis to 3rd in a year, and even if they did, they are losing a lot of engine power from Mercedes to Renault next year, so even if their chassis improves, the power definciency will see them stay about 6th best. but what if their chassis doesn’t improve? they could be fighting for 13th and 14th next year in races.

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