whats wrong with the renault engines?

[bill shoe]

The various calcs (a few posts up) make it clear that Renault has been running essentially zero electric power in Bahrain. Pure 600 hp gas engine only. Renault is indeed at square one with electric functionality.

And all the cars, including the Renault-powered cars, are overweight. However, the rules require them to run at least 20 kg of energy storage EVEN IF THEY USE ZERO ENERGY STORAGE. So they are required to race with a heavy battery pack that puts them overweight even thought they can't use the battery pack! Dismal.

And of course the lack of electric power means they will get worse mileage than the competition despite much lower power. It's likely they won't be able to run max gas power for the whole race distance!! So they turn it down to what, 500 or 550 hp?? Dismal.

Also, remember when Red Bull had "rear brake overheating" on day one or two of the Bahrain test? The RB rear brakes (and especially their ducting and packaging) were designed around an assumption that the MGU-K would do 120 kW of the rear braking. But now they have to run with all MGU's turned off so that leaves much higher thermal load on the conventional disks and calipers. The Renault teams haven't been able to do full race simulations (even with the MGU's turned off) because they don't have rear brakes that will last!! So now all the Renault teams are undoubtedly scrambling to design new rear brake packages for Melbourne, which is a heavy-braking circuit!! Dismal.

Renault teams are not on the cusp of catching up with a little software tweak, they are more like 6 or 8 steps behind. Very tough situation.

[Pup]

I'm curious as to how much of McLaren's own KERS development found it's way into the Merc engine. The P1 has essentially the same setup of harvesting and returning power using both brakes and turbo, and one presumes they've spent countless hours fine tuning the system. It has to have been an advantage to both Merc and McLaren, assuming they've shared at least some of the data. (This is one of the reasons also that I'm not too concerned over McLaren switching to Honda next year, as Honda should benefit equally from this data - not to mention the race data they collect this year.)

Ferrari have done something similar in the LaFerrari, though I believe it's only brake KERS if I'm not mistaken. Even so, it's a resource in tuning high powered KERS systems that I don't think Renault has access to.

[Blackout]

Couldnt find today's top speed... got them ? I want to compare the Lotus TS with yesterday...
ITW with Rob White
http://adamcooperf1.com/2014/02/22/rob- ... s-looming/

[beelsebob]

I'm curious as to how much of McLaren's own KERS development found it's way into the Merc engine. The P1 has essentially the same setup of harvesting and returning power using both brakes and turbo, and one presumes they've spent countless hours fine tuning the system. It has to have been an advantage to both Merc and McLaren, assuming they've shared at least some of the data. (This is one of the reasons also that I'm not too concerned over McLaren switching to Honda next year, as Honda should benefit equally from this data - not to mention the race data they collect this year.)

Ferrari have done something similar in the LaFerrari, though I believe it's only brake KERS if I'm not mistaken. Even so, it's a resource in tuning high powered KERS systems that I don't think Renault has access to.

I have exactly 0 doubt that the P1 was designed primarily as a method of making sure that they could develop ERS tech for their F1 car that worked independently of Mercedes' system. They'll need a well designed and tested system for next year.

Their super/hypercar projects should work as good ways of hiding costs when the budget cap comes in.

[Pup]

It's all Flavio's fault - we should have known...

Horner believes that former Renault team principal Flavio Briatore's decision that his team (now Lotus) rather than the French manufacturer itself should develop KERS originally is at the heart of the struggles.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/112596

[basti313]

The various calcs (a few posts up) make it clear that Renault has been running essentially zero electric power in Bahrain. Pure 600 hp gas engine only. Renault is indeed at square one with electric functionality.
.......
Renault teams are not on the cusp of catching up with a little software tweak, they are more like 6 or 8 steps behind. Very tough situation.

Not only tough...if they really run without MGU-K, they really have NOTHING out of the pre-season tests:
-Nothing on cooling without the cooling of MGU-K and too much cooling of the engine
-Nothing on gear ratios
-Nothing on e-breaking
-Nothing on tire usage without the power of MGU-K
-Nothing on traction control by MGU-K

[Blackout]

They did run with ERS every day. They just restrained it...
---

However, it is important not to get too carried away. While the general impression after two pre-season tests is that Renault in general - and Red Bull in particular - are in dire straits, it may not be as clear-cut as that.
Renault have ongoing reliability problems with their power unit; that is certain. But insiders say that in terms of performance it is looking very promising, even if it is not obvious from the lap times.
"It's where we think it should be," said a senior figure from one of Renault's lesser teams. "Reliability is a question mark, there is no doubt about that, but performance-wise, we're pretty sure it'll be there.
"We've certainly seen some very strong power figures. Of course there are problems, but we don't think they are anything they can't get on top of, and when it's working it will be fine."

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/26306929

[Pup]

"It's where we think it should be," said a senior figure from one of Renault's lesser teams.

Clearly their ERS-BS unit is working fine.

[rjsa]

They might be running ERS halfway and short shifting, and that would allow them to collect some of that that, but only the involved parts will know...

[LionKing]

I think the homologation at the end of February is a big mistake considering the brand new engine regulations. They should have allowed them to debug and develop at least through this season or for better freeze it before the start of the next season.

It's like designing a chip and freezing the design a month or two after the first tape out. New aircrafts go though an extended 12 month+ test campaigns before certification.

If I am not mistaken, the teams weren't allowed to put their engines on a car and test it before the 2014 winter testing. Was none of the teams concerned about this huge risk?

[Skippon]

Yes - but you can bet Mercedes HPE and maybe Ferrari have had their engines and ERS on the dyno since mid 2012. Mercedes won't be complaining about an engine freeze after such a successful test!!!!!

[iotar__]

AFAIU Lotus say they pushed the engine to full power for the first time, with some reserves in ERS-turbo and software (?).

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... 87134.html

Original quote: ""Wir sind die Antriebseinheit heute phasenweise zum ersten Mal bis ans Limit gefahren. Der Motor ist mechanisch gesund. Es gibt noch einen kleinen Rückstand bei der Elektromaschine, die den Turbolader steuert. Die größten Defizite liegen bei der Software, also wie wir die Power einsetzen."

[Blackout]

But there were some good signs. Chester confirmed that the car ran at "full power". Just to be sure, AUTOSPORT asked him for his definition of this.
"That's with full boost, full energy recovery release," said Chester. "We haven't run full energy release until today."
So that's with the maximum potential of the engine boosted by all 125,000rpm of the turbo and the full 120kW (about 160bhp) of electrical energy. That is positive. But it should be noted that there was a little wriggle room in his definition.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... r-renault/

[WhiteBlue]

Die größten Defizite liegen bei der Software, also wie wir die Power einsetzen."

This confirms my suspicion that Renault is way back in software development behind Mercedes and Ferrari. It matches with the view from Horner that the crucial decision was taken long ago for Renault not to develop ERS for the last five years.

[Juzh]

Kobayashi talks about renault PU:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfzRYON6 ... w_Cn0CQxJg[/youtube]

Starts at 11:38