Does Flavio Briatore suggest others are cheating ?
Flavio Briatore spoke with Gazzetta dello Sport. Quite a bit of the talk was about the current state of Formula 1. But he also said this:
“The problem is that us, Renault, have stuck to the letter of the current regulations on frozen engines, and we’ve been buggered: others didn’t do that and are far ahead, while we suffer. It’s not fair.”
Is he suggesting the others are cheating ? Or is he admitting that Renault engine guys simply haven’t bothered to exploit all the loopholes in the engine freeze rules ?
Does he know something we don’t or is he simply being pathetic ?
There have been suggestions that several teams managed to develop their engines and extract extra horse powers from them despite the engine frueeze rule. No rule violations have been proved so far. FIA begins their routine checks of the all the engines, starting with Hamilton’s German GP engine. We may know soon if Briatore has some valid reason for these comments.
But even if Briatore is right, how does he explain that Renaults have been regularly outperformed also by Renault powered Red Bulls (although Piquet’s podium reduced the point gap between these 2 teams to only 1 point) ?
Photo: Renault/LAT
tags: Tags: engine, FIA, Flavio Briatore, Renault
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July 30th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Well, I think that Renault has a not so good engine compared to the other top teams namely McLaren, Ferrari, BMW Sauber during that engine freeze effect being practiced. Besides, it seems that McLaren has developed the 4-paddle steering wheel which enables adjustment of engine torque. As it has been quite visible that the works’ team, either Renault or Toyota have been bettered by the non-works’ team, namely RBR & Williams. Perhaps these 2 engine supplied team have a better car with more effective aerodynamics, therefore they’re able to be ahead of the other 2 teams. This is just an assumption though, maybe they have an older spec engine compared to Renault & Toyota & it could be due to the fact the previous spec was a better engine than the current? Otherwise it could mean that McLaren, Ferrari, BMW Sauber have been unlawfully having some adjustments of getting more horsepower out of the engine with some unknown hidden methods. We never know. Time will tell.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
It’s about time to know if team(s) made illegal upgrades to their engines(?). Not to my surprise, FIA made the engine-freeze rule as sloppy as possible to allow future witchunting. If you put new components in order to improve reliability, you’re improving, developing the engine. If you get more HP out of new engine hardware, you’re again improving the engine. Changing exhaust geometries, oil specs, ancillary electronic control, gearbox, is not improving the engine but extracting the most out of it. The boundaries should’ve been painted very clear in the rules, I hope so. It’s is a disgrace that Renault, after having one of the most reliable and powerful engines for three years, they just played it nice and forgot to push the limits (the lev motif of F1). More disgraceful is to hear now Flav whining about other teams not following the “spirit of the rule”. Did he do something promptly about it to make the FIA to investigate? Why didn’t they push the limits too? Did they close the engine dept.? ahh, they though FA brought his magic wand from Maccas trailer….. and get 1.5 secs from the R28 !!
July 31st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Looks to me that Renault people lost the plot and need to find some culprit, if possible outside of the team …
July 31st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
in the meantime, Hamilton’s engine was give all clear by FIA :
“Mercedes-Benz were the first manufacturer whose engine was picked to be examined, with Lewis Hamilton’s race-winning unit from the German Grand Prix sealed after the race for a detailed examination by the FIA.
The sport’s governing body duly conducted an exhaustive test of the engine and its parts, as well as comparing it with the engine that was submitted to the FIA by Mercedes-Benz’s High Performance Engines division earlier this year.
The FIA confirmed in Hungary on Thursday that all parts of the engine conformed with the regulations, and there was no disparity between the power unit submitted before the season and the one being used now.”
July 31st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
It seems as though many of the possibilities for “development” would be through electronic management. Are the teams allowed to play with the software that controls distribution of fuel, valve timing, etc? and, is the FIA able to test for or detect these modifications? Just curious. Thanks, Mike
September 17th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
[...] in July this year Flavio Briatore complained that unlike others, Renault have stuck to the letter of the rule and as a result have fallen back. [...]