Will Limited Laps for Renault Engines Give Other Teams a Leg Up on Red Bull?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: January 29, 2014

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Renault-powered cars have won the last four Formula One Drivers' and Constructors' Championships, along with six of the last nine. In the first two days of 2014 preseason testing, though, Renault has looked like anything but a dominant force.

Renault is supplying engines to four teams this season: Red Bull, Lotus, Toro Rosso and Caterham. With completely new and more complex engines being developed, though, reliability has been a key concern for the teams.

The only way to know for sure whether the new machines are reliable is to use them on the track, testing their limits.

So far, in terms of totals laps run at the Circuito de Jerez, the Renault-powered teams are lagging significantly behind those using Mercedes and Ferrari engines.



Renault's total has been affected by the Lotus team's decision not to bring their cars to the first test, but that does not improve the situation. (By the way, remember when former team principal Eric Boullier told BBC Sport he knew "for a fact" that other teams would miss the first test? Not so much, as Marussia rolled into the paddock on Wednesday.)

Driving the cars on the track does more than test the durability of the new engines. Every second the cars are running, they produce data for engineers—both on the teams and with the engine manufacturers—to analyse and build on.

The less time on the track, the less data the engineers will have; the fact that Toro Rosso and Caterham have also run limited laps has the potential to hurt Red Bull, as Renault will have even less data on its new engines.

So far, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel appears unconcerned with his limited track time.

"Obviously we’ve not had a lot of running and have a few problems to sort out, but with such big rule changes it is usual to have some teething problems," he told Formula1.com. "That's what tests are for, to sort those...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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