Adam Cooper F1

Renault took advantage of “promotional event” running by Lotus in Jerez to put some miles on the latest updates introduced since the manufacturer hit problems in the earlier official test at the same venue.

Lotus, who skipped that session, had two 100kms days available under the FIA sporting regulations. The first, on Friday, was wasted when the E22 did only one lap. However, the maximum distance was achieved on Saturday.

Renault Sport F1 confirmed: “The basic objectives were to support the Lotus program with a power unit configuration and operation to allow systems’ checks and basic car operation. The latest PU configuration was deployed without any reliability problems, allowing Lotus to complete the maximum amount of km permitted on a filming day.

“Updates developed in the dyno at Viry during and post-Jerez test were run. Updates included minor hardware changes, software bug fixes and calibration improvements. Preparations at the factory are ongoing for the two Bahrain tests.”

The manufacturer also noted: “We should point out that no development was pursued during the filming day as stipulated in the sporting regs, rather upgrades trialled in the dyno in Viry were validated. As usual, everyone is committed to providing performance and reliability required for normal PU operation and a fully competitive 2014 season.”

Meanwhile a Lotus spokesman said: “We finished our running before 4pm on Saturday (due to the mileage restrictions imposed on a Promotional Event). Both the chassis and the new Renault power unit ran without any major problems. Pastor settled in very quickly and is already fitting into the team nicely. The car went together well and the design and build quality is another step up on the successful E21 of 2013, we are looking forward to a full testing programme in Bahrain next week where we will start to see the potential of the new package.”

Christian Horner has downplayed the problems suffered by Red Bull at the recent Jerez test as the team tries to make up for lost time.

The new RB10 completed just 21 laps, due to a combination of Renault and car issues, leaving Adrian Newey and his men with a lot of catching up to do.

“There’s a few things we needed to tighten up on our side but nothing major,” he told Sky Sports. “And obviously Renault have some issues that they are tidying up as well. But these cars are so complicated that even small problems can cause big failures.”

Horner conceded that the Bahrain test will be critical.

“Obviously, there’s quite a bit to do but there’s still a fair bit of time before the first race. The Bahrain test next week is an important test, and we are working very hard at both Renault and Milton Keynes.

“We don’t want another test like Jerez, but that’s what testing is for, you sort your problems out so as not to have them at the races.”

Nico Rosberg has done more mileage than any other driver in a 2014 car thus far, the German having topped the laps completed charts at Jerez last week.

He already enjoyed a head start after he shook down the Mercedes during a promotional day at Silverstone the previous Friday.

“Definitely I think it’s a surprise to do so many laps,” said Rosberg. “It’s such a mission with this new technology and everything, and really to get this reliability so early on is really a positive. But we’ve got no idea where we are in terms of pace and all that. So it’s really early days.

“We expected it to be a couple of tough days here in Jerez, and it did start quite tough for us, but the team did a good job to turn it around, and now we’ve really got the kilometres going, and lots of laps, and I’m very pleased with that. That was the most important thing for this test here, just to do a lot of laps, because it’s laps that will show you where are the problems with the car, what are the weaknesses we need to focus on, and by doing all these laps we really learned a lot of things now, and that’s a good thing.

“Driving wise it’s all pretty similar. It’s a bit of a pity because the cars are slower, obviously we always prefer to go faster, so that’s not quite as nice. Other than that the big difference is the engine, the low rpm, the sound, and the gears that you use and all that. From then it’s just how much you need to use your brain to understand all the technology, the fuel saving, the ERS, how to use that. That’s going to be quite complicated.”

Rosberg would have run even more laps had he not handed the W05 to Lewis Hamilton for the last part of Friday’s running, although he says he didn’t mind sharing.

“I always want to drive all day every day, that’s clear, but it’s always been like that in the team, that we need to try and level things out in testing, that each driver gets a the same opportunity to do a similar amount of laps, and things like that. I know that because I had the same issue with Michael, where my car was breaking down all the time, and he managed to do loads of laps. And he jumped out and let me have a few laps too. That’s normal for us as a team.”

Ross Brawn said today that he’s retiring from F1 – and insisted that he was not joking.

Brawn was speaking at a fishing event in Scotland, where he was invited to mark the traditional February 1st opening of the River Dee by making the first cast.

His comments would seem to put an end to speculation that he could return to the sport with McLaren or Honda.

“What they didn’t realise when I was invited here was they had a scoop because the world’s press was trying to find out if I was retiring or not,” Brawn was reported as saying by The Daily Telegraph. “This is the busiest time of the year for Formula One and I said I would come along and open the River Dee. If they had put two and two together they would have realised I was definitely retiring.

“I’m retiring. It’s not tongue in cheek I’m going to take a year to enjoy the fishing and then see what life brings. I’m looking forward to it but I’ve got no other plans.

“It’s a fantastic honour to do the ceremonial opening of the River Dee. It’s a river I’ve never had a chance to fish before because it is predominantly known as a spring river and in the spring I’m normally trying to sort out a Formula One car in Spain. So February, March and April are never good months for me to go fishing – but this year is different having stopped.”

It can’t have been easy for Daniel Ricciardo to maintain his trademark smile over the past week in Jerez, given the problems with the Red Bull RB10.

Nevertheless despite realising that the upcoming season might not be the one he had hoped for the Aussie remains upbeat about the prospects of his team turning things around.

“Obviously now it’s good to have a bit of a break before Bahrain, take it all back to the factory and figure it out, and look forward to doing a few more laps there,” he said. “We obviously tried running everything how it should be run. Everything needs to correlate properly, it’s a complex machine this year. As we expected it’s going to take a bit of time, so we’ll go back and hopefully figure it out before Melbourne.

“If anyone can pull it off it’s these guys, but there’s nothing to pull off yet, it’s still early. But I’m sure they’ll make a quick turnaround, because they’re the best in the world.”

Ricciardo said the reliable form of Mercedes was not a concern for his team.

“I don’t think it adds pressure. For all we know they could be a second off the pace, who knows? So we’re not going to read into it. Obviously we would have loved to have done more laps, I came here to drive, but we’re not going to get down about it.

“We came here to drive, but we also came to understand, and I think they’ve definitely understood some things. Let’s see what happens in a few weeks.”

Regarding the specifics of what was wrong, he said: “The issues we’ve had the last few days, it’s complex I guess, it’s a combination of more or less everything. It’s such a complex system this year that it’s not going to take 24 hours to solve. It’s best now that we get some time away from the track, and figure out what needs to be done. That’s not my job, but obviously I’ll keep in touch with the team in the next few weeks, and see how it’s all going.”

Given the mechanical carnage in Jerez this week tyres have not received a lot of coverage, but nevertheless it was an important test for Pirelli as the company had its first chance to run with the new cars, and in both wet and dry conditions.

Pirelli also gave the teams a helping hand by providing a ‘winter compound’ designed to allow them to log miles in the cool of a European January. The fastest time of the week, Kevin Magnussen’s 1m23.276s on Thursday, was set on new mediums.

Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery has made it clear that the company is flexible in terms of what it has to provide this year, and will wait to see what happens at the Bahrain tests.

“The emphasis was not on tyres during this test,” said Hembery. “Instead the teams were simply trying to get an understanding of this radical new set of regulations and put the first kilometres onto their cars. With so much to understand about the new power units and aerodynamic rules, the teams aimed simply to increase their knowledge about the cars.

“The upcoming tests in Bahrain should allow them to focus on tyres a little more, having had two weeks to develop their cars and remedy any issues that have been identified at Jerez. We too are completely open, flexible and ready to adapt our tyres should the tests in Bahrain, where more meaningful running will take place, identify any need to do so.”

For the record, Pirelli says the longest runs achieved by each tyre were as follows:

10 laps on the supersoft compound
9 laps of the soft compound
17 laps on the medium compound
24 laps on the hard compound
23 laps on the ‘winter’ compound
26 laps on the intermediate compound
13 laps on the wet compound

Renault’s Deputy Managing Director (Technical) Rob White has been a man under pressure this week, and to their credit Renault’s PR folk tonight issued this Q&A, allowing Rob to address the problems seen in Jerez.

We have seen very little running from the Renault-engined teams this week. What have the issues been?

“We have not run enough laps, and when we have they have not been run at an acceptable performance level. The underlying causes are not straightforward: there isn’t a single component or system that has caused particular trouble. A number of related things have been troublesome, principally concerning the control and operation of the various sub-systems of the Power Unit within the car. For example on the first run day, we had problems with a sub-system within the Energy Store that did not directly concern either the battery nor the operation of the battery – it is an electronic part that was in the same housing as the Energy Store. We subsequently had problems with turbocharger and boost control systems with knock-on effects on the associated engine management systems, subsequently provoking mechanical failures.”

What fixes did you implement in Jerez?

“Between days 1 and 2 with the help of Red Bull, we implemented a later level of hardware for the rest of the test to address the problem within the Energy Store. This ran for the remaining days. In parallel to running in Jerez, the team at Viry has run dyno test programs to investigate the trackside problems and to propose solutions. We identified the probable root cause of our main turbo control issues, implemented some workarounds that were first seen at the end of day 3 and deployed in the three cars for day 4. This established a very minimalist baseline from which we could build.”

Why were these issues not flagged up on the dyno?

“We believed our initial configuration was a robust start point for track use but it has not proved to be the case. We have done substantial dyno running in a similar configuration with few issues. We now know that the differences between dyno and car are bigger than we expected, with the consequence that our initial impressions were incomplete and imperfect. Our intention was to run the car; we are very frustrated to face this litany of issues that we should have ironed out on the dyno and which have deprived us of a precious learning opportunity.”

Have you learned from the limited running?

“Absolutely, and at this stage every kilometre is hugely valuable. We recognize that when the cars have run, they are not running at an acceptable level. We are a long way from the type of operation we had planned and prepared for – largely as a result of the workarounds we have implemented – but all the information is useful. In dealing with the issues we have moved further away from the configuration we were comfortable with, which has resulted in the relatively slow times, but the running has given us a vastly greater understanding of the issues we face. We absolutely expect to have a more definitive solution in place for the next session in Bahrain.”

Has every team experienced the same issues?

“Several problems are common to all, as the power unit is the same specification in all the cars except for relatively minor installations differences. Some problems are particular to one installation environment, but it is our responsibility to deal with all of them. In general, the individual issues are understood; we have worked with all three teams running this week and despite appearances, have made some useful progress. We have not uncovered any big new fundamental problem, although we must recognize that our limited running makes it impossible to be certain.”

What is the road map from now until the second test in Bahrain?

“Of course we now have a large job list for Bahrain as a lot of the items we wanted to test in Jerez we have not been able to cover. The next stage is to identify the root causes for the problems we experienced, to develop the solutions to strengthen our validation process so we can be more confident to tackle Bahrain in a more normal way.”

Are you concerned by the fact that engine specifications are frozen pre-season?

“The homologation deadline is the end of February and is fundamental to regulations. Beyond that time, changes are permitted only with prior approval from the FIA. Change is not forbidden, but subject to the sporting regulations and we should not get so hung up on this date.”

In view of this test, are you still in favour of the new regulations?

“Yes absolutely. The powertrain regulations are a massive challenge but also an opportunity, and are hugely important in placing F1 back at the vanguard of technology. We have the necessary tools and determination to succeed. The step we must take to reach an acceptable level of in-car performance is bigger than we would have liked. It is unacceptable that we have not been able to mitigate the problems sufficiently to allow our partners to run at any length. We are working hard to correct this in time for Bahrain and aim to make amends there.”

Red Bull’s woes continued in Jerez today as Daniel Ricciardo ran only seven laps before the team was forced to pack up for the day.

The team has logged a total of just 21 laps over the four days, and very few were other than trips straight back to the pits.

The initial problems related both to hardware provided by Renault and the tight packaging in the car specified by Adrian Newey. The car ran today with a hastily fabricated cooling vent protuding from the sidepod.

“It’s been a very difficult test,” said Christian Horner. “We have had numerous Renault issues as well as chassis cooling issues, which have affected our progress. However, despite the lack of mileage, what we have managed to learn shows that the problems should be solvable for the next test in Bahrain. Part of the purpose of this early test was to learn about any issues ahead of the start of the season and there will now be a lot of focus on the dyno over the next few weeks.”

Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum said: “We did seven laps and every time Daniel went out we made improvements to the control of the engine. We were also making fixes to the issues that have arisen from our side and we have made progress there.

“However, we then discovered a mechanical issue with the car and after investigation it became clear we would not be able to fix this in time to run in the afternoon, so the decision was taken to retire early, take the data we have amassed and work towards the next test in Bahrain. Two weeks is a long time in Formula One and we and I’m sure Renault will work flat out now to solve the problems we’ve been having.”

Lewis Hamilton completed his Jerez running on Thursday sounding very satisfied with progress at Mercedes as the W05 continued to log laps.

Hamilton also made some interesting observations on what it’s like to drive the current cars.

“The tyres are a little bit better, more durable,” said Hamilton. “You can do perhaps maybe 30 laps, and you have a lot less wear on them. They still overheat like any other tyre, so you still have that kind of issue. With the car we’ve lost obviously the rear lower element of the rear wing, we don’t have the blown diffuser any more, so that’s a huge amount of downforce that we lose.

“So when we get on power the rear is much, much weaker than what we experienced in the last couple of years. So you have a lot more wheelspin, generally. Otherwise it’s an F1 car still. You have a lot of power, and when you’ve got new tyres the power is pretty impressive.

“Regarding the torque he said: “In the past we’ve used first and second gear through corners, now we’re using fourth and fifth.”

Hamilton said he was impressed by the job done by Mercedes this week.

“We were the first ones out on the first day, obviously I had the issues with the front wing, but we fixed that and we’re working on that for the future. But watching the other teams who haven’t been out hardly at all, for example Red Bull – you would imagine Red Bull would be doing easily as many laps as us with their track record, but obviously they’ve had some issues as well. It shows you how technical it is and how difficult it is for every team, and how challenging it is.

“This is going to be a seriously challenging year for every team. Everything is different – the braking is different, we have this new braking system, which is brake-by-wire, which at the moment is not the best thing to use. That makes it trickier, and we’re trying to fine tune that. We have new dashboards on our steering wheels, and we’re trying to fine tune those.

“You’ve got a turbo, you’ve got KERS. All these new things are so complex, far, far beyond what we’ve had before. As a driver we have more multifunction switches on the steering wheel than we’ve ever had before, so it’s a big challenge.”