Renault target ‘no reliability issues by Monaco’

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In the round-up: Renault’s Cyril Abiteboul says that the engine supplier is aiming to be on top of its reliability problems by the Monaco Grand Prix.

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Renault braced for more Formula 1 problems in Bahrain Grand Prix (Autosport)

"Cyril Abiteboul: 'We knew we had this reliability risk above our heads. I'm not quite sure from a logistical perspective that it could be addressed for Bahrain, but certainly our aim has been to have absolutely no reliability issues by Monaco.'"

Red Bull issued quit threat to make Renault step up - Christian Horner (BBC)

"Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz's threat to quit Formula 1 is an attempt to make Renault improve its engine, says team boss Christian Horner."

Lauda backs Hamilton, saying drivers have to be 'egocentric bastards' (ESPN)

"Lauda: 'What do you think these guys are here to do? I call them egocentric bastards. That is the only way to win and the only way to win the championship, they are all the same.'"

Ferrari expected China defeat (Racer)

"Vettel: 'After Malaysia was a big, big happiness for all of us, and here we were expecting exactly what's happened. Our strategy was to be near them as much as possible, to take advantages of any mistakes. It's happened exactly as we have in mind, so I think we have achieved our objective.'"

Fernando Alonso: 'Not the best feeling' to be lapped by Ferrari (ESPN)

"Alonso: 'Obviously, it's not the best feeling, at all, but we know that it's the way it is at the moment and we think that it's not going to be for too long. It's just for a few races now at the beginning.' "

Pastor Maldonado: Does 'Crashtor' deserve his bad reputation? (BBC)

"The trio of incidents gave way to a slew of criticism on social media, with Twitter users branding the 30-year-old Lotus driver 'shocking', 'awful' and the 'gift that keeps on giving'."

Poor start ruins Ricciardo's Chinese GP chances (NBC)

"Ricciardo: 'We got into anti-stall on the start, which hasn’t happened before. At least some positives are that we learned a few areas where we need to improve and the smart guys in the team can find a solution.' "

Chinese Grand Prix 2015: Five things we learnt (Telegraph)

"In the early stages of this race, Red Bull and McLaren were running 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th. It would have been absolutely unthinkable just a few years ago. Both these teams have an extraordinary amount of work to do to get back to the front."

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Comment of the day

After Nico Rosberg was heard complaining on the radio about his team mate’s race pace, @philipgb wonders if the pressure to beat his double world champion teammate is getting to the German…

I struggle to understand how someone as intelligent and experienced as Rosberg falls to keep his cool and is letting Hamilton get under his skin so much. He was visibly agitated in that press conference.

Hamilton is spot on, his job is to manage his car and get the best result he can for it. In the same situation he would have said thank you very much to Rosberg going slowly and attacked.

And I remember in Monaco 2013 where we had two ‘silver buses’ leading the race which made it hard for Hamilton to fend off Red Bull in the pit stops and he held his hand up and accepted it was on him.

You have to wonder if there is something behind the scenes now Ferrari is a threat because Rosberg just continuously looks miffed and defeated. Every time he opens his mouth in a press conference he makes Hamilton look in control.
@philipgb

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29 comments on “Renault target ‘no reliability issues by Monaco’”

  1. Nico must cool down. Lewis did nothing new or wrong. He was managing his own race and Nico is experienced enough o understand that.

  2. Regarding CotW. I’m not sure you could even consider it “letting Hamilton get under his skin”, when Hamilton is seemingly as perplexed (as well as amused) as the rest of us that Rosberg is getting so agitated. Perhaps “Rosberg is shoving Hamilton under his skin” might be more appropriate!

    1. There was no accusation intended of Hamilton playing games. He really is just letting his driving so the talking.

  3. The commentators were getting so excited by Verstappen’s overtakes. They mentioned something about this guy having great feel for the brakes, is it something real hard to achieve with these new generation of cars with BBW?

    Here’s one interesting read from one of my favourite cricket writers: A formula to save cricket?
    Well, if you love both F1 & cricket :)

    1. “They mentioned something about this guy having great feel for the brakes, is it something real hard to achieve with these new generation of cars with BBW?”

      Well, it’s difficult to brake and steer at the same time. When you use the maximum grip of your tyres to slow down, you have no grip left to steer. When you want to steer in the braking zone, it means you have to release the brakes a little to give the tyres lateral grip. What Verstappen did yesterday was braking hard and steering at the same time. Very impressive, Hamilton-style: See overtake Hamilton-Raikkonen in Monza 2007.

      1. Thanks @matthijs, that helped.
        I also missed out on this article by Maurice Hamilton, probably was linked in the f1fanatic round-ups.

    2. @praxis That’s an interesting link. Thanks for sharing! :)

    3. It’s something hard to do to that level full stop. He’s braking deep into the corner, still getting the car rotated and not locking up or killing his front left. And he was doing it over and over without fault.

      It was impressive when we all saw Hamilton do tricks like this in his rookie year, but he had way more racing experience in other series and back then testing wasn’t limited like now so Hamilton had driven way more miles in an F1 car before the season began.

    4. I have to completely disagree with the praise of those overtakes. They were wild dives that he got lucky the other person moved out of the way. He did not have apex ownership by turn in and didn’t appear to have enough control to back out if one of his opponents decided “nope, it’s my apex.” Had they chopped him off and wrecked, we’d be hearing a different story about how he came from a long way back and it was over-ambitious.

      1. @joey-poey Certainly the first one I saw (think it was on Ericsson) was way too ambitious and he was lucky not to get sideswiped. The others were better judged, aggressive but not dangerous in my opinion (I’ve only seen them once so reserve the right to change my mind given further evidence ;)).

        1. Well, if he improves his skill at every overtake he makes, I think we’ll be fine.

  4. “No reliability issues by Monaco…” is that because all of their 2015 engine allocation will have gone up in smoke by then so they will be on pedal power?

    1. +1 I believe they only have 1 left in teh RBR camp, there is fair chance of that happening

      1. Or because Monaco is the shortest race on the schedule (260 km vs 306 km at the other circuits), so the engines could resist until the end of the race…

  5. Wonder why Lauda had a problem with Nico going into a overtake move so early at Spa. After all he wants them to be an ‘egocentric bastard’.

    Mercedes better hope Ferrari stay at an arm’s length. Otherwise their intra team troubles will cost them the WDC title come end of the season.

    1. Well, Nico crashed the other car. Otherwise I don’t think Lauda would matter much.
      Intra team troubles? What troubles? The only thing that is getting Rosberg some headlines is his moaning, and it don’t seem to be disturbing his teammate. 3×0 on quali, 3×0 in races.

  6. Wonder why Lauda had a problem with Nico going into a overtake move so early at Spa. After all he wants them to be an ‘egocentric bas***d’.

    Mercedes better hope Ferrari stay at an arm’s length. Otherwise their intra team troubles will cost them the WDC title come end of the season.

  7. Just noticed there’s no article by Keith today.

  8. I can condense an excellent ten hours of endurance racing at Silverstone into the weekend into three statements:

    1) The WEC has shown an excellent understanding of the core fans’ desires by introducing Le Mans-style starts for each race and has never seemingly done anything to infringe on the the purity of the spectacle.

    2) Motorsport requires variety – would the Formula Ford-style duel between Fassler and Jani been possible without having vastly different packages? Since the WEC’s core appeal is its variety, by putting 1000bhp+ prototype monsters on the same racetrack as a V8 Ferrari that is nineteen seconds slower, is motorsport necessarily improved by homologation?

    3) F1 has no monopoly on driving brilliance. The weekend efforts of Neel Jani, Mark Webber, Sam Bird, Tristan Gommendy, James Calado and especially Andre Lotterer amount to as hearty a portion of driving skill as any Grand Prix. In Lotterer the WEC has, had he got his F1 chance, a likely F1 frontrunner.

    Are you listening, Bernie?

    1. Are you listening, Bernie?
      No.

  9. Perhaps Renault would be better off using 2014-spec engines until they get these reliability issues sorted. The performance can’t be that much worse and at least they were reliable enough (usually) to last more than a couple of races.

    1. They went learn what the issue is what way. RB and TR aren’t winning any championships this year. Best to carry on as they are and learn from the failures.

  10. Renault is a joke! I don’t see how people can side with them (apart from those who just love to hate Red Bull). They appear to have gone backwards in terms of both power and reliability, at least they definitely are the ones least improved of the three. And what good are those saved tokens if the teams can’t use new engines without being heavily penalized. Ricciardo is already on his third engine (and that one is the early spec), so even if (and that’s a big if) Renault makes a huge leap forward, he could only use one new spec engine before the penalties start to push him further and further down the grid.
    Renault’s saved tokens and this alleged “strategy of gradual development” *might* have worked if they could introduce major improvements each five races, which would coincide with their engine’s life cycle. But their rubbish PUs don’t live that long, so, unless they can bring updates mid-season that will make use of all 22 tokens they have (which is highly unlikely), their clients will not benefit from this stupid strategy at all. It increasingly looks to me like Renault still have all those tokens to spare because they simply don’t know how to spend them, rather than they’ve been deliberately saving them.

    And what’s with this slimy Abiteboul guy? He went from Renault to Caterham in 2012, lead the team into bancruptcy over two years, then returned to Renault late summer 2014 – to do what? To drive Renault out of the sport?

    1. You might say that Cyril is the power unit equivalent of Sam Micheal…

      Still, it’s not *all* Renault’s fault. They lost a chunk of staff following their issues last year (Cyril was parachuted back in once Caterham hit trouble because Fernandes finally bottled it) and Red Bull used their position to demand fast improvements, ignoring the fact that you can’t develop an engine iteratively like you can an aero package. Granted, Renault should have said ‘hell no, you fools’ rather than rushing untested developments to the track, but hey-ho.

      1. I know this Abiteboul guy used the ‘RB wanted fast imrovements’ line of defence. But it doesn’t add up. Renault still has most of their token unused – what kind of improvement is that? I’d gei it if Renault spent all their tokens on poorly tested new parts – that would be fast development. But as it is, they improved least parts of the engine compared to both Merc and Ferrari. This is not fast or aggressive, this is just lame.

        I say enough with that Abiteboul bull. The other Renault guy, Taffin, who I hold in much higher regard, openly admits that they spent quite a lot less money on the development (including last season), that Merc or Ferrari. Adding the fact that they tried to push a larger chunk of the development costs onto their clients (as Renault has been the most expensive PU), the company really has shot itself in the foot.

  11. Dear Nico:
    Your attitude really disgusts me. Almost everything you are saying about Lewis is true but you are ignoring one thing: Lewis is faster than you. Do you really want to pass him? Then simply be faster than him.

    And remember something, even when lewis is behind, you still find ways to destroy your tyres anyway; think of Russia and Italy last year; and who was responsible for that? I think Lewis also. You should know how to distinguish between having responsibility of something and being the cause; if Lewis is causing you problems that are already not his fault (unlike what you did last year in Monaco and Spa for instance), then you are responsible for not knowing how to handle the situation. Be faster and you will simply be away from such problems.

    I hope you never win a championship with this attitude.

  12. The article about Pastor makes one very important point that I feel is worth reiterating: he’s had too many years to smooth over his rougher aspects. Yes, he won a race. But so have many other drivers in the field and they manage to have far fewer silly mistakes. While other young talents are waiting to get in the door and seem to have to rely on Red Bull picking them up, a seat is being hogged by money and one good result being waved around.

  13. This race has been a very bad advert for them.

  14. If Renault don’t sort their act out never mind catching Mercedes and Ferrari, Honda will pass them this season.

    Performance wise Red Bull are currently 5th at best. Put McLaren back up there and they are out of the points.

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