Alonso comments on Renault’s deficit

Even though former world champion Fernando Alonso finished fourth in the season opening Australian Grand Prix the Spaniard knew that this was due to the high rate of attrition and in Malaysia, Renault had an alarming wake-up call. Alonso finished this event in eighth place and after the race he admitted…

"That was the maximum. Without Massa spinning off I would not even have scored a point."

In his analysis his Renault needs to find one second per lap in order to be competitive but one of the problems is its lack of speed in a straightline. According to internal sources, the Renault V8 has fallen behind the other engines in the past two years with less horsepower and poor driveability, mainly because a lot of their experienced engineers left the engine department during that period.

The engine issue is also one of the reasons why Toro Rosso is looking quite strong against Red Bull despite having a year old car. The Ferrari engine has taken a good step forward over the winter months where the Renault has not moved. Red Bull has already had a few meetings with Renault’s chief engineer, Rob White, in order to ask for an explanation.

So, why didn’t Paris realize last year that there was a deficit? Probably because the downforce of last year’s car was so poor that the straightline speeds were not affected.

Renault’s situation shows that the engine freeze is a bad system. It means that they now have to accept this situation until the end of 2012. That is not motor racing. Saving costs is okay, but you can do it differently and still allow the engineers a small margin for progress. Automoto365.com