Tag: Renault

Back to form and back to black in 2020?

As the world’s press gathered in Paris, Renault launched their 2020 season with the biggest anti-climax since Ferrari’s 2019 season. Do Renault not understand we wait all Winter just to put up with the occasional tedious event so we can see a glimpse, a snippet, a morsel of a 2020 car? And what do we get? A CG render of a 2019 car with a… testing livery? What a let down. I mean I really don’t know what to say now! I mean surely you can pick up the structure of these pieces, start with a few rubbish jokes or metaphors, mostly slate the livery designers or the PR of a team, say how I could obviously do a better job with no qualifications relating to those fields, before coming to a convoluted prediction for the season which ends up being wronger than a sultana in a salad. But I’ll do my best with this and see where this stream of consciousness takes me.

I was very worried for Renault just after the ‘launch’, especially when they said they did the launch without completing the real car. I thought we could’ve seen a beta version of what Williams did the season just gone. For a manufacturer team, with major backing and with the employment of a Mr Daniel Ricciardo, having that sort of season would be a disaster and that’s an understatement. But nevertheless those fears were soon quashed when in the next few days pictures appeared of the Barcelona shakedown, albeit not in the best of quality. Season back on.

And then the very next week we see Renault turn up with a nose 2.0. The R.S 20 nose job. In a testing week that started with mundane R&D updates, the nose of the Renault certainly caught the eye of many, before the innovation that must not be named stole the limelight like the drunk uncle at a wedding. Will it work? We’ll wait and see. Looks like we’re getting a three-way scrap for fourth place this year, and you would’ve thought you wouldn’t get a Renault on the back foot two years running. One thing’s for sure though, that five year plan for Renault’s path to the top is looking precarious. It would take a lot for consistent, legitimate podiums this year, but that’s just the nature of the beast in Formula 1 in its current guise. In hindsight, it always was going to be a tall ask, but to be fair, if Renault had the season they should’ve last season then maybe the five year plan has sort of worked. But if they’ve closed the gap to the front and are competitive with the top of the midfield then it’s been a bit of a success and perhaps delay the five year plan to a seven year plan. It shouldn’t be out of the question, bearing in mind the 2021 rules to come, and the budget cap coming into play, which hopefully compresses the field further.

Ocon v Ricciardo is already a done deal in many people’s minds but I reckon it could be quite an interesting battle. Ricciardo’s contract is up at the end of the season, so will he be looking to sell himself with plenty of contracts expiring this season, including 3 realistically available seats at the top opening up. It would be a shock if Hamilton and Bottas didn’t re-sign for Mercedes, but there are very strong question marks over Vettel’s future. Plus Ricciardo’s gamble for Renault hasn’t paid off either, yes he disposed of Hulkenberg, but the car didn’t look like giving him race wins any time soon let alone a championship. While it made sense to jump ship from Red Bull at the time he did, the longer his Renault stint goes on, the more it looks like a stop gap career move. Daniel needs to keep his stock high this year regardless of Renault performance. He could still return to a top seat, but needs to show he’s worthy. For example, unless there’s fireworks, or one of them falls off the pace, you can’t see either McLaren driver jumping ship, despite thoughts Ferrari would go in for them if Vettel left, it is difficult to turn down the Scuderia, mind. Again, it all depends on who pulls the trigger first.

If Ocon has a really good season though, it would be interesting to see how tight the elastic is back to Mercedes, if it exists at all. If Bottas is let go, would Vandoorne upstage him? If Stoffel wins the Formula E championship, and impresses on the simulator might he get the call? He is regarded highly, after all. It’s easy to forget George Russell too, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Talk of this only really continues if Ocon hits the ground running at Renault and gets a few early jabs in against Ricciardo. This time there must be no excuses. The team dynamics no longer work against him, as you could’ve argued at his time with Force India. French driver in a French team must also help him too. He still has the potential, does Ocon, but he ran the risk of being forgotten last season, and is in danger of becoming the new Hulkenberg as it were. High potential needs big results eventually. He certainly has the pace to upstage the Australian this season, and I for one, hope he does.

Like a banana left out too long, the banana car seems to be getting blacker by the minute.

C’est ici, aujourd’hui Renault révélé leur 2019 voiture. En Anglais? It’s here, today Renault revealed their 2019 car, the R.S.19. First impressions are as you’d expect really, deja vu. They didn’t need to change it, so why bother changing what worked so well last time out? An old Top Gear quote comes to mind when thinking about the livery for this year, “you can’t improve on perfection.” Jeremy speaking about the frankly hideous Hammerhead Eagle iThrust there. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to compare the two because you can’t. Hats off to whoever thought of the idea of a car that was yellow when looking head on, but black from side on. It’s the ultimate appeasement really.

It’s not officially been said but is thought that when Renault returned to F1 back in 2016 they wanted a black livery with yellow highlights, hence they sort of launched with that scheme. It was only really backlash from us fans that forced them into rocking up at Melbourne with a reversed scheme. Since then they’ve adopted this 50:50 livery which slowly becomes darker season by season. To be honest I’m surprised that the Enstone team has kept a similar livery from last year, taking my head out the clouds for a minute it would seem logical that we should’ve had more black this year. Then again, it probably speaks volumes about the astuteness of the R.S.19, and if the car is as clever as its livery suggests then Red Bull should be looking over their shoulder.

I still think my favourite contemporary Renault livery is the 2010 car. Don’t ask why, for me the reasons are intangible to me, but that’s probably nostalgia more than anything. F1 was my world back then, but I’d like to hope that I’ve since ditched the rose-tinted specs, or at least partially done so. You could even argue the R30 is almost the reverse scheme to the R.S.18 and 19.

At the time of writing this, shamefully several hours past the reveal, I’ve just noticed that the physical car is ever so slightly different to the one shown in the video and the studio pictures. Hopefully the physical car is the one they actually use because I was going to critique it for needing more yellow on the front side, but the physical car seems to address this? Someone probably knows about this more than me. Even then it’s just little things that I’d ask for, probably it’s just me being pernickety but maybe some yellow on the sidepod entry so the car does appear to be fully yellow from the front? Definitely take the yellow off the inside of the rear wing, for me it doesn’t look right. In fact, they should’ve just done the exact same livery as last year, after all you can’t improve on perfection.

My last point can be applied to all the teams. Why not incorporate the halo into your livery design? I think it’s easiest to give an example to on the Renault. From the birds’ eye view there are the yellow streaks that flow from the drivers’ shoulders to the engine cover. Why not have a yellow halo and follow the lines in a similar vein to what we have, but following where the halo attaches itself to the chassis behind the driver? Apologies if you’ve been a little sick in your mouth at the thought of this, I mean it looks and sounds nice in my head but hey that’s the thought of one bloke spewing stuff at a computer screen and hoping it sticks.

I thought the Hulk was green?

Big year for Renault lies ahead, and if it goes as successfully as they think it can be, this year has to be as big for Nico Hülkenberg. He needs that podium which has been a long time coming. Reassurance would be an understatement, not just him, but for us. We always felt that he deserved a race win and a shot in a ‘big team’. Pole in his debut year at Interlagos, whilst almost taking a win there in similar conditions two years later shows you why. He’s always had his height, thus weight against him, but this year that’s going to change, with rules now helping the taller drivers. If Red Bull and Honda get off to a shaky start, Renault will no doubt have the 3^rd fastest car, which is prime podium territory, as Red Bull showed early last year. Nico has to prove that he has been wrongly overlooked for a seat at the top. Especially considering who he’s up against this year.

Daniel Ricciardo has form of turning a team from one that belongs to one driver, to one that belongs to him. Nico has been at Enstone since 2017 and has been dominant against his team mates there, mind you Jolyon Palmer was there for 1 and a half seasons. If Ricciardo puts on a 2014-esque display then Nico is going to be in big trouble. I doubt he’ll be around long, especially with Esteban Ocon waiting in the wings, who was very nearly signed to replace Carlos Sainz Jr for this year.

Equally you could say it’s a big year for Ricciardo too, as he was beginning to fall out of favour to Verstappen at Red Bull. If Daniel doesn’t grab the bull by the horns, so to speak, at Renault and fails to live up to expectations, we would quite clearly know why he fell out of favour. However, Australians do seem not to be the flavour of the month, or decade, at Red Bull, so there may be more reasons than just his pace for this.

Ricciardo really needs to maintain his top tier driver status in F1. I really hope his heart is in it, he dodged a question from Abiteboul asking him about the level of risk in his move like an in form politician. He seems to have gotten away with it because of his cheeky smile, but if this was Alonso speaking about the McLaren Honda project, no doubt there’d be essays about his responses which could be regarded as similar to the one Danny Ric gave today. Just food for thought, but the current trajectory of the Renault team is exciting that’s for sure, and he has already publicly given his thoughts about being cut off from Mercedes and Ferrari so it’s hardly breaking news.

Where Renault finish in the standings this year strongly depends on the strength of Red Bull Honda. 3^rd has to be the aim this year, but I think a stronger 4^th position would be taken by the team. They have to hope that the power duo of Mercedes and Ferrari have been somewhat culled by 2019 rules and regs. Renault need to be convincingly closer to the top at each weekend if they are to prove their title credentials for 2021 as set out by their own master plan. It’s about time we had a shake up at the top and Renault are certainly favourites to do this.