(Renault Sport F1)
Renault Sport F1 head to this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg having powered Infiniti Red Bull Racing to their first win of the 2014 season last time out at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal where Daniel Ricciardo scored his first ever Formula One victory.
For the first time this season Renault also had two driver's on the podium with Sebastian Vettel joining his team mate having finished the race in third place. Renault have now secured five podium finishes so far this season. Renault Sport F1's Head of Track Operations Remi Taffin is excited that Renault are returning to Austria.
The last time Renault were in Austria the French manufacturer were a 'works' team and Jarno Trulli finished the race in 8th place, one lap down while Fernando Alonso retired from the race. Taffin said:
'It’s a pleasure to return to Austria for the first time since 2003. It’s a beautiful, flowing track that may look simple but there are a number of challenging points for the Power Units that will push us to the limits.
'It’s a pleasure to return to Austria for the first time since 2003. It’s a beautiful, flowing track that may look simple but there are a number of challenging points for the Power Units that will push us to the limits.
The circuit consists of four long straights, meaning the ICE runs at full throttle for a high percentage of the lap. From our simulations, we estimate approximately 50% of the lap will be taken at wide open throttle, comparable with Montreal and Silverstone. These long periods of open throttle will not only put the ICE under a lot of pressure, but also the MGU-H that will need to recover and deliver lots of energy to the MGU-K to minimize lap time. In this respect, Austria and Canada have very similar characteristics.
There are only nine corners at the Red Bull Ring, which will not give the MGU-K many opportunities to recover significant energy under braking. That said, we will need the MGU-K to feed the ICE with extra power, so making efficient use of the little energy recovered will be extremely important.
One other challenges of Austria is the high altitude, which will cause the turbo to spin at a much higher rate to compensate for the low ambient pressure – very close to the hardware limit.
We have recreated some of these climatic conditions on the dyno and feel confident we have a good handle on the preparations. The win in Canada has certainly given us a boost and confirmation that we are going in the right direction but we still have a long way to go before we can expect to challenge on a regular basis.
© Ben Johnston 2014
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