Renault in Repose:
In reflecting on its development progress this year, Renault says it will look back with immense satisfaction and pride on its accomplishments. The team’s back-patting is well-deserved, considering it estimates it found two seconds’ worth of pace between
its performance at the season-opener in Bahrain and this weekend’s Abu Dhabi finale.
Even though Renault’s upgrading blitz did not get them back to the top of the podium, the team will finish fifth in the Constructors’ Championship, compared to their eighth rank last year.
While it seems absurd for a first-rate team to be grandstanding about coming in fifth place, Renault’s technical director, James Allison, insists that arbitrary ranks and numbers do not tell the whole story. According to Allison, his team’s development
rate this year has been even more impressive than Renault’s championship-winning seasons in the mid-2000s.
"I can't remember a season with a greater rate of development," he said. "I don't know whether the total number of upgrades we've made to the car was the highest we have achieved, but the accrued lap time gain through the season is certainly the biggest
I can remember.”
Renault’s strategy for this season was to maximize their car’s performance by adding something new for every race. To these ends, Allison applauds the efforts of the entire team, whose innovations, efficiency, and effort was second to none – including the
Red Bull team who won the Constructors’ Title.
“What I'm most proud of is how the whole factory has pulled together, from the design office to the guys who make the parts, to deliver the performance to the car as quickly as possible."
Allison cited Renault's F-duct as an illustration of their cutting-edge innovations, praising it as the most significant factor in the team’s progress.
"Although we were one of the later teams to introduce an F-duct, we were quite proud that we were able to make it work from the first timed session, ” said Allison.
Indeed, while McLaren first introduced this device to lower drag and maximize speed, Allison’s team pushed the design envelope even further. As a result of their fine-tuning at Spa, “the gain from the F-duct was worth more than half a second per lap," the
technical director said.
With this newfound drive, creativity and energy that has gripped Renault’s development team, one can only guess at what impressive designs await the F1 world for the 2011 season.
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