Tag: Renault

2020 Belgian GP report | Hamilton dominates at Spa

Posted on by James Mackenzie
The rain never came, but it was plain sailing for Hamilton.
Lewis Hamilton wins the Belgian Grand Prix.
Image credit: AFP

Lewis Hamilton took a comfortable victory at the 2020 Belgian Grand Prix to further extend his lead in the championship, with Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen completing the usual HAM-BOT-VER podium.

It was a fairly sedate race at the front. Hamilton had more than enough to cover anything his teammate threw at him – which was thoroughly demonstrated on Saturday with two stellar qualifying laps, more than half a second faster than Bottas – and Max Verstappen unable to challenge the mighty Mercedes on this occasion.

An early crash by Antonio Giovinazzi, that also collected the helpless George Russell, brought out the safety car on lap 10 and all the front-runners, bar Sergio Pérez and Pierre Gasly, took the opportunity for a cheap pit stop and ran to the end on a set of hard tyres. Whilst things started to get a little uncomfortable towards the end, and Hamilton’s mind clearly flashed back to that puncture in Silverstone, there were to be no late dramas this time and the Briton took his 89th victory – now just two short of Michael Schumacher’s all-time record – again being denied a ‘grand chelem’ only by a fastest lap on the final lap.

He dedicated the win to Chadwick Boseman, best known for his starring role as Black Panther, who sadly passed away over the weekend at the age of just 43. “It’s been an emotional weekend, I want to dedicate this win to Chad and his family, he was such an inspiration and his legacy will live on.”

Renault Find Their Form

The aforementioned fastest lap was set by Daniel Ricciardo as he closed in on an unlikely podium, finishing just three seconds behind Verstappen in the end.

Daniel Ricciardo at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Image credit: XPB

Renault have been steadily improving as this quick-fire season has progressed, but this year’s black-and-yellow machine really came into its own with a low downforce setup at Spa. They were near the top of the timings all weekend; Ricciardo second in Practice Two and teammate Esteban Ocon in the same position in Practice Three.

Come race day, the Renaults fell back from the top three somewhat but, it would become apparent, were far kinder to their tyres and, with a few more laps, the Honey Badger may well have been designing a tattoo for Team Principal Cyril Abiteboul…

The 44 laps of the Belgian circuit were enough for Ocon, though, who held off the late charge of Lando Norris and successfully passed the Red Bull of Alexander Albon on the final lap for fifth place. 23 points for fourth, fifth and the fastest lap, is Renault’s best points haul at a single race ever. And things bode well for next week’s trip to Monza, where an even lower downforce setup could well see Abiteboul sweating once more.

An Emotional Weekend, Especially for Gasly

A minute’s silence was held before the race in memory of Anthoine Hubert, the F2 driver who was tragically killed at last year’s Belgian Grand Prix. Many of the young, French drivers grew up with Hubert but Gasly, in particular, considered the young Renault protégé one of his very best friends.

So, it was excellent to see the AlphaTauri driver continue his good form this weekend and come home with some more points in eighth place. He made up a number of positions in the opening laps, despite starting on the hard tyre, and showed incredible bravery as he passed Pérez into Raidillon, the Mexican squeezing him to a dangerous degree.

The safety car fell unkindly for Gasly and his counterstrategy, but he fought back through the field excellently, after switching to the medium compound on lap 26, and felt he had done enough to make his former roommate proud come the chequered flag. The fans voted him the Driver of the Day.

More Pain for Ferrari…And It May Get Even Worse

Ferrari did not expect much coming into this weekend, but they may well have managed to underdeliver, nonetheless. The deficiencies of the SF1000 were brutally exposed and its lack of straight-line speed was particularly evident in the first and third sectors of the lap in Belgium.

There were fears that Ferrari would struggle to progress through Q1, after Practice Three left Charles Leclerc in 17th and four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel plumb last. They did narrowly avoid that particular embarrassment, but 13th and 14th on the grid was a long way from locking out the front row before a maiden victory for Leclerc at the same circuit last year.

My personal suspicion is that the team overly focussed on an especially downforce-heavy car for this season due to their superiority on the straights in 2019. But, once the engine rules had been clarified and severely hampered them, it was too late to dramatically change the philosophy of the 2020 design.

Whatever the reason for their shortcomings, it is probably a good thing that there will be no Tifosi at next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, as it will likely be the lowest downforce setup of the year and their problems will only multiply.

Nil points at Spa is humiliating, but nil points at Monza…

There is certainly a big hill to climb for those in red.

Image credit: Foto Colombo Images

The Belgian Grand Prix in 60 Seconds

Answering the Burning Questions

Can anyone (well, Max Verstappen) challenge the Mercedes? They haven’t won here since 2017… Nope, they have now not won here since 2020…

Will a better result in Spain help motivate Sebastian Vettel? It must have been hard to find any motivation in this Ferrari at this track.

Or will Ferrari just struggle terribly around the power-sensitive Spa track? Yes.

Will the pressure increase further on Alexander Albon? It was another okay race and Helmut Marko has come out and backed him. For now, at least.

Could we have a wet and wild Spa weekend? *sigh* No.

2019 Italian GP report | Leclerc delights home crowd with second victory in a week

Posted on by James Mackenzie
And the Tifosi goes wild!
The podium at the Italian Grand Prix.
Image credit: LAT Images

Seven days after Charles Leclerc took his maiden victory, but one that was tarnished by a tragedy on a sad weekend for motorsport, the 21-year-old took about as joyous a victory as you could ask for at the 2019 Italian Grand Prix – a first win for a Ferrari at Monza in nine years, in front of a jubilant Tifosi.

Leclerc claimed pole position on Saturday, amid ridiculous scenes where most drivers failed in their attempt to take their final runs. (More on that later.) He started well enough and held off a challenge from Lewis Hamilton into the first corner. But once his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, had spun on lap 4 and was effectively out of the race, Leclerc was left with the weight of Italian expectation solely on his young shoulders.

Mercedes had the strategic upper hand. They could attempt the ‘undercut’ with Hamilton and run the sister car of Valtteri Bottas long, in something of a pincer movement. And so it transpired. Ferrari reacted to Hamilton’s earlier stop and pitted Leclerc one lap later; a good in-lap and a quick stop ensuring that the Ferrari driver came out ahead but Hamilton then set about a charge, ramping up the pressure whilst he had a tyre advantage.

The world champion fashioned two chances. Leclerc defended robustly, to the very edge of acceptability, as he has done ever since Max Verstappen rudely barged him out of the way in Austria. On lap 23, Hamilton got along side on the run to the second chicane and Leclerc squeezed him in the braking zone, leaving less than a car’s width. He escaped a penalty but was shown the black and white flag for unsportsmanlike behaviour – effectively F1’s equivalent of a yellow card in football. So when, on lap 35, Leclerc locked up at Turn One, cut the chicane and made a late move to defend from Hamilton as they rounded Curva Grande, one could argue he was fortunate not to receive his second yellow. But the stewards did not investigate and Hamilton didn’t get another chance as his tyres began to fade.

Leclerc wasn’t in the clear yet though as the second half of the Mercedes pincer was closing in. Bottas, on tyres that were eight laps younger, had been steadily closing the gap and claimed second place when Hamilton himself locked up into the first corner on lap 42. The Finn couldn’t put up as stern a challenge as his teammate, however, and never truly threatened Leclerc, who held on to take the chequered flag and spark fervent euphoria amongst the partisan home crowd.

He becomes the third driver in recent memory to win on their Ferrari debut in Monza; the other two being Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher – not bad company, eh?

Meanwhile on the Other Side of the Garage…

Another Italian Grand Prix, another costly spin for Vettel. And this one was even more costly -both for his standing in the race and within the team.

He has now been out-qualified seven times in a row by his teammate. Some of those, including this weekend where Leclerc seemingly did his best not to give Vettel a tow, have come with a caveat. But it does seem Leclerc just has a bit more speed at the moment and it feels like he has subtly grabbed hold of Vettel’s number one status and is now refusing to let go, like a feisty young pup with his new favourite toy.

This is the latest in a line of mistakes from Vettel, now lasting well over a year, and this one was particularly amateurish. He spun all by himself whilst entering the Ascari chicane and then rejoined the track in an incredibly dangerous manner, taking out the unfortunate Lance Stroll in the process. He put himself in a position to be T-boned by another car, eight days after a young man was killed in that exact way. That’s shocking from such an experienced driver – a director of the GDPA, no less.

In fact, it was quite an amateurish weekend all round. There was the utter shambles of Q3, where seven of the nine drivers ran out of time before starting their final runs as they all jockeyed for position, determined not to be at the front of the train without a slipstream. There was Stroll rejoining the track in exactly the same manner as Vettel, just after being hit by him, and forcing Pierre Gasly into the gravel. And then a couple of unsafe releases to top it off.

There was also a terrifying F3 crash on Saturday morning which brought into question the presence of ‘sausage kerbs’, with one having launched the car of Alexander Peroni 15 feet into the air. A scary moment, especially with the death of Anthoine Hubert so fresh in minds throughout the paddock, but fortunately Peroni escaped with just a fractured vertebra. It was promptly removed for the rest of the weekend but there must be a better solution for enforcing track limits. I say bring back gravel traps – maybe a relatively thin strip of gravel with tarmac run-offs beyond for safety’s sake.

A Good Weekend for Renault

It has been a trying season for Renault. Expectations were high after the signing of Daniel Ricciardo, with the team claiming they would be aiming to close the gap to the top three teams. But they have produced a mediocre car with poor reliability and found themselves slipping back from where they were last year.

This was a better weekend, however. Renault’s engine has generally been closer to a laughing stock than the class of the field but, for whatever reason, it seemed to work for them at the most power-sensitive track on the calendar. Whether it was the new spec engine which they introduced recently, nailing the setup here in Monza or a combination of the two, the Renault pair were never too far from the front.

Nico Hülkenberg at the Italian Grand Prix.
Image credit: XPB Images

And there were no slip ups on Sunday. The two yellow cars kept their noses clean, avoided the occasional chaos around them and brought home an invaluable haul of 22 points. This instantly propels them up to a comfortable fifth in the constructors and they can now set about chasing down McLaren and aim to at least reclaim what they see as their rightful position as ‘best of the rest’.

A Quick Word on Penalties

It would appear that the teams, the FIA and FOM have agreed on a new approach when it comes to applying penalties in the wake of the controversy regarding Sebastian Vettel’s win-that-wasn’t in Montreal this year.

We can see from incidents such as those between Leclerc and Verstappen in Austria and then Great Britain that the stewards have decided to be more lenient and let the drivers battle it out on track more. Race Director Michael Masi even came out after the race and explained their decisions – which is very refreshing and one of the things I called for in my post addressing the Vettel penalty.

I’m all for the drivers battling it out – I think we all are. But there was one point I noted from Masi’s explanations. He stated that if Leclerc and Hamilton had made contact, when the former squeezed the latter off the track, it would have been a penalty rather than the black and white flag. This seems problematic – it is almost encouraging contact between drivers. In avoiding a dangerous move by another driver, the ‘victim’ of said move is putting themselves most likely off the track and doing the aggressor a favour at the same time. We are in danger of veering towards the diving issue in football where players are required to produce theatrics in order to force the officials to make the right decision…

The Italian Grand Prix in 60 Seconds

Answering the Burning Questions

Can Ferrari take another win and send the Tifosi wild with a first win in almost 10 years? Yes!

Will Alexander Albon build on his promising Red Bull debut? It was another solid performance but the decision to stay on the outside of Sainz was slightly naive and cost him positions.

Can Sebastian Vettel take the fight to Charles Leclerc and recover some credibility? That would be a pretty resounding no.

The forecast is for rain…could we have another Germany on our hands?.. Sadly not. It rained before and after the race…typical…

Will Max Verstappen bounce back or could we be about to see a string of errors like early 2018? It was a good fight from the back but another somewhat clumsy error at the first corner.

Any more ‘silly season’ twists incoming? Nothing to report.

Launch season kicks off! (Kind of…)

Posted on by James Mackenzie

So, here we go. The new season is getting tantalisingly ever closer and half the teams have now broken cover!

Except they kinda haven’t…

The launches of Haas and Williams only ever claimed to be livery launches but the others will be giving as little away as possible too. The giant, new front wings are hard to miss but beyond that, teams will be showing the world exactly the angles of the car they desire, to ensure they hide any clever loopholes or strokes of genius they’ll later be introducing. So, there’s not a huge amount to garner from these launches…but I’ll give it a quick go at summarising and at least talk about how pretty (or not, or familiar) the new liveries are.

 Rich Energy HAAS F1 Team

Haas began proceedings with the online stream of their livery launch. Their new title sponsorship with Rich Energy (a supposed energy drink that seemingly nobody has ever found a can of in real life) brought about a new colour scheme for the American team.

Whilst a not particularly subtle nod to the legendary JPS Lotus, it’s still a pretty nice black and gold number. But personally I’d have preferred a bit more of the gold and you wonder whether it may end up just looking like a less bright Renault. It has also now come to light that Rich Energy are being sued by ATB Sales – a British company that owns Whyte Bikes and their undeniably almost identical logo – so we’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for both the company and the livery…

Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda

Then came Toro Rosso with an actual car! But they decided a new car and a new livery would be a bit too much so basically Ctrl-C-Ctrl-V’d last year’s livery. In fairness, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ definitely applies here. Since morphing to the lighter shade of blue at the start of 2017, the Toro Rosso has been one of the best-looking cars on the grid. Certainly combined with James Key’s design expertise, which has made them all very neat and well-packaged.

This is their first venture without Key since his move to McLaren but they appear to have followed the same design philosophy. The team confirmed he will not be directly replaced, mostly thanks to an even closer technical alliance with Red Bull now that they are sharing Honda engines. The rear packaging in particular appears to be bordering on size zero and will apparently be a carbon copy of that of their big brother.

ROKiT Williams Racing

There was some excitement around what livery Williams would adopt having lost Martini, and their iconic livery, at the end of 2018. The team actually bothered to rent somewhere out for their launch, which is something of a rarity these days, but the response to the new livery was…mixed, shall we say?

Less kind reviews compared it to a tube of toothpaste, a generic livery from a computer game without any official licences or a dodgy attempt at using that spray can on MS Paint. Following the classy Martini livery, whether we were all tired of it or not, was always likely to be tricky but they could probably have done better. Especially with Claire Williams stating they spent such a long time on the livery. The exposed carbon parts are quite a nice touch though. And hey, the last car looked nice but was a truck when it came to the track. If this one is an improvement on that front, I’m sure they won’t really care what people on the internet think of its appearance.

Renault F1 Team

Renault followed suit with both the Haas ‘you get a livery but not the actual car’ approach and the Toro Rosso ‘it looks pretty, let’s keep it as it is’ one. There is a little more yellow than on last year’s RS18 and it arguably accentuates the shape of the car better but that’s about it really.

The profile shots show a noticeably higher rake. Very much the Red Bull approach of recent years, who have arguably had the best chassis on the grid, so you wonder if Mr. Ricciardo knows something that we don’t… Maybe he’s pulled a Lewis-to-Mercedes and we’ll be talking about the first Australian champion since 1980 in a couple of years. Or maybe it’s just high rake. Time will tell.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport

Amazing what a difference a halo can make, huh? Last year’s championship-winning machine was far from an eyesore, but the big, black halo lumped on top certainly was. For whatever reason, Mercedes appeared to put less effort into incorporating the halo than the rest of the grid. Maybe they were too busy focusing on being unbeatable. Either way, this year they have addressed that with some silver paint and it makes a surprisingly big difference. Along with the usual striking splashes of Petronas aquamarine, there is the nice touch of a flock of Mercedes stars towards the back. This is a beautiful car. A true Silver Arrow.

According to James Allison, they have “worked hard on the suspension and aerodynamic characteristics to deliver a car that will be much kinder to its tyres”. That has probably been their Achilles’ heel in the last couple of years so if they succeed, it will be hard work for the rest of the field.

As much as they will undoubtedly be expanded upon in the coming weeks, it’s interesting to see the varying base approaches the teams have adopted for the new front wing regulations. And we are yet to see the supposedly ‘radical’ designs McLaren and Alfa Romeo have in store. I’m an armchair aerodynamicist at best but the main change is that these new front wings will struggle to create ‘outwash’, where air is directed outside the wheels. As has been stated by many a technical director in the past, the front wing is the first part of the car to hit the air and thus is very important. So. we could yet find that someone has had their own brilliant Brawn-double-diffuser moment come Melbourne.

Mostly, these launches have made me long for the days of the massively over the top ones of the late 90s and early 00s. Popstars, lasers, more popstars, celebrities, an Airbus… They had it all. But there are still five to go…and the Spice Girls have reunited… Pretty sure there’s someone in the paddock with a connection there…