The problem for Renault isnt that Alonso left. The car simply sucks, and there is nothing a driver can do about thatQuote:
Originally Posted by stevewf1
Printable View
The problem for Renault isnt that Alonso left. The car simply sucks, and there is nothing a driver can do about thatQuote:
Originally Posted by stevewf1
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Garry Walker
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.
Alonso would have fought for a podium with this Renault IMO, but not for the win.Quote:
Originally Posted by Malllen
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rudy Tamasz
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by jens
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…
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!
Pat Symonds -http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57963Quote:
"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."
Jarno Trulli -http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/57968Quote:
"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."
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