Q+A with Bob Bell
As the European leg of the 2009 Formula One season came to an end with the Italian Grand Prix, the Renault F1 Team now travels to Singapore for a challenging night race at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. Renault's Technical Director Bob Bell looks ahead to the upcoming weekend.
"I think the result showed the potential of the car and Fernando certainly got 100% out of it. We were fortunate to gain a few places in the race but overall I think that fifth place was a fair reflection of our competitiveness and brought us the sort of points that we should have scored in the last few races."
Romain has done three races now. How is he progressing?"He has settled in very well and all of the engineers that have worked with him have been very impressed. He’s clearly quick and over the Monza weekend he was just two or three tenths off Fernando, which is what we would hope to see. He has been unfortunate that he hasn’t really had a clean race so we’re yet to judge his true race pace, but he’s clearly got a lot of potential."
We go from low downforce in Monza to high downforce in Singapore. Will the R29 adapt easily?"As I’ve said previously, the R29 doesn’t have any specific weak points and delivers a similar level of performance with both high and low downforce. Its weakness is that it needs more overall performance in terms of grip through downforce and mechanical set-up. This weekend we will use a similar package to the one we used in Monaco, although we will incorporate the evolutions made since that race."
What challenges does the unusual schedule present to the team?"Based on our experience last year, I would say that night racing has not caused too many difficulties for the team and the facilities and lighting in Singapore are excellent. We’re effectively working nightshifts in Singapore, but as a team we remain on UK time so it works quite well. The team keeps to the same schedule as at any other race, except that everything is shifted a few hours later in the day."
How is the team approaching the final four races of the season?"We do have developments planned for some of the remaining races and they will come along in due course. There’s nothing major but they are sensible upgrades that are already in the production process. Our main development focus is now completely on the R30 and getting ready for 2010."
