Given that the downshifts didn't look rough or rejected or delayed, I read this and all I could think of was "EBD effect" - obviously we're not talking a sealed diffuser but I struggle to join up the 'invisible downshift problem' with 'unexpected car handling'?? Is he just talking about harvesting/balance?
http://adamcooperf1.com/2014/04/05/seba ... f-the-car/
“On my final run we had some issued with the downshifts, which upset the balance,” he said. “It was the only shot I had in Q2. It was quite close. Good for Kimi who was 10th, and bad for me who was 11th at that stage. Couple of reasons why – I think at the end I wasn’t able to extract 100% out of the car.
“For some reason from one to the other, from the final run in Q1 to Q2 something went wrong and we couldn’t fix it in time, so I had to do the lap compromised. How much it affected the lap is difficult to measure, but surely it was no help the car behaviour wasn’t the way I wanted it or the way I expected it. But I’m not a fan of blaming something in particular. For sure that didn’t help, without it probably yes, I would have made it to Q3, but still it was not the session that we wanted to have this evening.”
And weren't the wastegates only for safety reasons, given that the MGU-H heatsinks take the role in these engines? I'm sure Remy Taffin said that. So have Renault been allowed to use the wastegate normally for reliability reasons?