Renault head into their home grand prix with a much-needed car upgrade and, as Mark Hughes explains, with engine development back on track, France could be a seminal moment in their season
Thursday 20 June 2019 11:16, UK
So far this season, it's been very difficult to see real evidence of Renault making good on its pre-season aim to pull itself clear of the midfield and close the performance gap to the top three teams.
But this weekend in its home race at Paul Ricard, we get to see - arguably for the first time - what the true potential of its 2019 car/engine package is.
After an early season that was badly disrupted by a design fault in the engine that led to a con-rod failure for Nico Hulkenberg in the second race, and further compromises in bringing aero developments onto the car at the Enstone chassis base, Renault thus far is solidly in that midfield and its average qualifying deficit to pole is over 1.5s.
For this season Renault aggressively pursued a big power increase from its power unit to close the big deficit to Ferrari and Mercedes that had built over the previous two seasons.
The initial 2019 engine as raced in Melbourne and Bahrain was around 50bhp more powerful than that of 2018, which would have been competitive with the 2018 Ferrari and Mercedes engines.
But those manufacturers had of course found gains of their own for 2019. GPS analysis suggested that Renault was between 25-27bhp down in qualifying for those opening two events, but closer than that in the races. That qualifying deficit would typically equate to around 0.2s of lap time, whereas in those two races the car was an average of 1.86s off the pace, giving an order of magnitude measurement of the car's chassis shortfall.
Furthermore, it was also evident that the new MGU-K unit had a reliability issue. Things became even worse when Hulkenberg suffered his con-rod failure late in the race at Bahrain. This latter problem took Renault Sport completely by surprise.
Team boss Cyril Abiteboul later conceded that the winter development programme had been so focused on finding extra engine performance that some shortcuts had been taken in reliability testing. As the cause of and solution for the con rod problem was found, the power units had to be run in very conservative modes in both China and Baku.
A new spec of power unit was introduced for Spain, with modifications attending to both the MGU-K and con-rod issues. This too was run fairly conservatively in that race, just to establish that the modifications had worked. It was let off the leash from Monaco onwards.
Monaco is the least power-sensitive track on the calendar. The following race in Montreal represented a much better test of the effectiveness of the power upgrade - and the results were encouraging. Although Daniel Ricciardo's fourth-fastest grid slot was flattered by problems for both Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas, the 0.8s deficit to pole, at 1.183%, was the smallest of the season to date. Ricciardo and Hulkenberg took a solid six-seven in the race, with no reliability issues.
With a major - and overdue - aero upgrade set for this coming weekend (believed to comprise new front wing, barge boards, floor and rearranged cooling that has allowed an enhanced airflow-accelerating coke bottle profile for the rear bodywork), everything seems nicely poised to show the Renault's ultimate potential.
If such a major upgrade was worth as much as 0.5s, it would potentially take the Renault into some very interesting territory, very close to Red Bull (on the assumption that that team or Honda hasn't found their own significant gains).
A lot could be hanging on this performance for Renault. The team is under pressure from the board to show evidence of progress at a time when participation beyond 2020 and into the new contract with Liberty is being discussed.
Sky Sports F1 is the home of live and exclusive F1. Find out more here to watch the 2019 season live
