Technical briefing with Bob Bell at Silverstone
The ING Renault F1 Team’s Technical Director, Bob Bell, sums up the situation at the mid-season mark. The Renault F1 drivers will start tomorrow's British Grand Prix at Silverstone from 7th and 8th position.
"We’re reaching a key moment in the process. In fact, we’ve identified and understood the problem. To sum up: it’s a shortfall between our wind tunnel simulations and the results measured on the track. We’ve been working on a huge programme consisting of both on-track and wind tunnel testing and analysis, and we’ve identified the components that were causing the problems: they’ve been modified and changed. Today, we understand the car which reacts according to our simulations."
So why aren’t you now in front of your rivals?"It’s simple: figuring out and solving our problems have taken up time and we’ve fallen behind in the normal development of the car; Today, the gap separating us from our rivals doesn’t come from the problems we’ve run into since Melbourne. We’ll close it by speeding up the pace of our development. The factory’s ready to take up the challenge."
Did the problem you identified suddenly appear this winter?"No. In fact, in hindsight we saw that it already existed last year. As we were competitive it wasn’t really a worry.”
At Magny-Cours Giancarlo was talking about the arrival of a new front wing in Budapest. Why has it taken so long to bring in this new part?"The adoption of a new front wing comes from a process in which no stage can be left out. When the wind tunnel has frozen the specification of the part to be manufactured, the file is sent to the design office. Then the moulds have to be made, the parts manufactured and they have to be tested from a structural point of view. Finally, you can’t turn up at a grand prix with the new part unless you’re certain of the gain it’ll provide. So the performance increase has to be validated as well as the part’s robustness. All this takes around four weeks, provided that the tests are programmed at the right moment in the process."
What do you feel about today’s qualifying?"We’re a bit disappointed not to be starting from row 3. Ralf Schumacher’s speed surprised us. But our pace in race set-up is consistent and we’ll certainly be strong in the grand prix. Overall, we’re about where we thought we’d be. The car hasn’t changed since Magny-Cours. Things are under control."
Source Renault
