Friday, 25 July 2014

Renault Sport F1 Friday Review

Renault Sport Hungarian Grand Prix Practice Report
(Renault Sport F1)

Renault had a very productive first day with Infiniti Red Bull Racing as reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel ended the day as best of the rest behind the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. How it wasn't all plain sailing for the team as Daniel Ricciardo suffered a small technical issue with the energy store unit on his RB10, however he went on to finish the day in 7th place just behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

The Renault powered Lotus F1 Team had a difficult day as Romain Grosjean suffered a cooling system leak in his E22. The Frenchman went on to finish the session in 17th place while Pastor Maldonado finished in 16th place.

Hungarian Grand Prix
(Charles Coates/Lotus F1 Team)

The four Renault powered team's of Infiniti Red Bull Racing, the Lotus F1 Team, Toro Rosso and the Caterham F1 Team covered over 2,000KM over the course of the day. Speaking about today's running Renault Head of Track Operations Remi Taffin commented:

'The Hungaroring is a very different track to Hockenheim in terms of engine requirements, so today we focused on delivering driveability through the low speed turns through good turbo response and energy deployment.’

The characteristics of this track suit us better than the previous four and we could make good progress today. We got some interesting results and there is more to come tomorrow once we have been through all the data. Initially though, the drivers were able to attack the circuit and were pretty happy and the mileage count was pleasingly high.

Our programme today was to focus on driveability through the low speed turns via good turbo response and energy deployment. That said, we also continued to work on the software controlling the ICE and the new fuel from Total. The combined aim was to deliver more power. Although not strictly required here, where power sensitivity is very low, it is useful on the short bursts of power and of course at the faster tracks we will visit after the summer break.

Weather conditions were extremely hot today, but still a couple of degrees below the peak we saw in Germany last weekend. As a result we felt in control of the situation and did not play around with the settings too much.
Overall we’ve gained a lot of very useful information and look competitive on the longer runs. There will be more to come from us tomorrow once we’ve been through everything tonight.'

© Ben Johnston 2014

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