Renault Australian Grand Prix preview

(Jean-Michel Le Meur - Renault Sport F1)

 

Renault Sport F1 head to the opening round of the 2014 season at Albert Park in Melbourne this weekend following a less then satisfactory winter testing period for their four team's. Red Bull Racing, The Lotus F1 Team, Caterham and Toro Rosso all suffered various reliability issues related to the new Renault power train.

 

The French manufacturer's Head of Trackside Operations Remi Taffin says that the nature of the Albert Park circuit has always made it very difficult for Formula One cars and that this year there is an even greater challenge as the sport will debut the 1.6 litre V6 turbocharged powertrains at the Grand Prix.

 

Taffin believes that the tight corners and the short bursts of acceleration will pose the biggest challenge for the teams. He also believes that the slow speed corners will put extra pressure on the new brake by wire system that has been introduced for 2014.

 

This season, to cope with the demands of the new power units Renault has sent an extra person to each team so that every Grand Prix this season their customers will have eight support engineers from the engine builder.

 

This is broken down to one engineer, one technician, one electronics technician and a performance engineer. they will be split between each car one team of four per a car per team.

 

The new turbo charger is capable of 100,000rpm which amounts to 1,500 rotations per second. The NGU-H is also capable of very high rotations as it is connected to the turbocharger.

 

The MGU-K plays a crucial role when it comes to performance because this year if the MGU-K fails it affectively means that the engine will become uncompetitive as it would only be powered by the internal combustion engine.

 

If you compare this to last year, if a car suffered a KERS failure during a race it would mean that the driver would lose 0.3s of performance.

 

Drivers are restricted to five engines this season which means that a single unit must be capable of completing 3-4 GrandPrix weekend's.

 

 

(Renault Sport F1)