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(Renault Sport F1)
Renault Sport F1 head to the Malaysian Grand Prix this
weekend having suffered two power unit failures over the course of the opening
weekend of the season last time out in Australia.
The French manufacturer saw
Infiniti Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso suffer power unit failures
which means that both teams are already down to three PU’s for the remainder of
the season.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s race, Renault Managing
Director Cyril Abiteboul commented saying:
‘Australia
certainly wasn’t an easy weekend and we fell short of our own expectations, and
those of our clients. We need to work together to understand our issues,
both within the Power Unit and the chassis. Our figures have shown that
the laptime deficit between Red Bull and Mercedes in Melbourne was equally
split between driveability issues, engine performance and chassis performance.
It’s therefore the overall package that needs some help and we have been
working with the team to move forward. We’ve been particularly aggressive in
development and we should see the results a lot more clearly in Malaysia,
particularly since we have had the opportunity to refine the PU using the data
from Australia. Work is still ongoing but even now we are in a completely different
place to where we finished Melbourne.’
Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo finished the
race in 6th place while Formula One rookie Carlos Sainz Jnr scored
points on his Formula One debut as the Spaniard finished the race in 9th
place.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s race, Renault Sport F1’s
Director of Operations Remi Taffin stated:
‘The
genuine progress we made over the winter was not at all shown in Melbourne so
we are highly motivated to go to Malaysia. We see it as a chance to press the
restart button for the season. Our design development group has been working
non-stop to create counter-measures to improve driveability and reliability and
correct the issues we saw in Melbourne. We have run in the dynos at Viry and
will conduct further, refined tests after Malaysia. Additionally some of the
issues we had were amplified by specific Melbourne characteristics such as
track layout, up and down ambient temperatures and so on. Malaysia should be
better in this regard since the conditions tend to stay stable throughout the
weekend and we can focus progressively on set-up with the team, which should
show our true level a lot clearer.’
© Ben Johnston 2015
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