The Renault F1 Team gears up for the start of the new season which begins this weekend with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne's Albert Park, a stop-start mixture of temporary street course and a purpose-built track.
This means the circuit includes an interesting variety of corners with unusual geometry and a constantly evolving track surface. Setting up the car is therefore a challenge, which is further complicated by the fact that most of the sixteen corners are really quite different with each one presenting a different sort of challenge for the cars and drivers.
AerodynamicsMelbourne is on a par with the aerodynamic demands of Silverstone or Sepang and therefore requires a medium to high downforce set-up. With the introduction of moveable front wings, the drivers will be able to change the angle of their front wing by six degrees twice per lap (once to change to the new angle, and the second time to return to the original setting) which could be used to help balance the car between two corners or to aid following another car closely.
The circuit features a few critical high-speed corners, such as the fast fourth gear open chicane that forms Turns 11 and 12, which is perhaps the most challenging part of the lap, as Fernando Alonso explains: "You have to be so precise through this section. We take these corners at over 200 km/h and the approach to turn 11 is tough as your view is channelled by the concrete walls and you don't see the apex until late.
If you make a mistake in turn 11, you lose position for turn 12 and that can ruin your lap time."
By using a higher downforce set-up, the drivers will hope to get good traction on the exit of the slower corners, which is important for carrying good speed onto the straights.
SuspensionMelbourne has a number of chicanes where a responsive car with a good change of direction is critical. The suspension therefore has to be relatively stiff to achieve this, but at the same time the car needs to be soft enough to use the curbs and have good stability under braking. An optimum set-up therefore demands a compromise, dovetailing hard and soft settings accordingly.
BrakesAlbert Park is a demanding circuit on brakes with six major braking zones demanding stops from over 300 km/h. It is not the severity of the braking, but the frequency that makes an efficient brake cooling solution a priority during the race. The track surface can be bumpy in the braking zones, but nothing too significant and a soft enough car should be able to ride the bumps without locking up under braking.
TyresThe temporary nature of Albert Park means the track is 'green' and dusty at first and gradually improves over the weekend. With the re-introduction of slicks this year, the team will pay careful attention during free practice to the behaviour of the super-soft and medium compounds that Bridgestone will bring to this race – both of which must be used during the race. The high track temperatures usually experienced in Melbourne will play a role in determining which compound is preferred by the drivers.
Engine PerformanceMelbourne offers a good test for engines with the V8s operating at full throttle for 66% of the lap. However, the secret of a good lap time depends not on peak power, but on good torque to help launch the car out of the slow corners that connect the succession of straights.
This is particularly true of turns 14, 15 and 16, which are all tight, tricky corners, as Nelson Piquet explains: "The car wants to understeer in the final part of the lap and so that can make it difficult to get on the power early. Having KERS this year might make a difference as we may be able to use it to help our acceleration out of these low-speed corners or if we are trying to gain or defend a position. Either way it should help improve our lap times."
Q&A with Pat Symonds, Renault's Executive Director of Engineering:Pat, it has been a busy winter at the test track - do you feel the team is fully prepared for Melbourne?"I think we're as prepared as we can be, but with the new testing regime we will arrive in Melbourne with fewer kilometres on the car than we would normally have achieved in previous seasons. The weather has also been quite poor during pre-season testing, which has held us back a little, but when the car has been running it has been working well and I'm not too worried."
What about the drivability of the car? Are the drivers happy with it?"At our first test in Portugal we only had one dry day and initially the car was quite difficult to drive, especially as we were getting used to the new aerodynamic characteristics. But as we've introduced the updates in preparation for Melbourne, we've moved towards a pretty driveable car that both Fernando and Nelson are comfortable with and it's now behaving much more as we want it to."
We have some radical new regulations this season – do you enjoy the challenge this represents?"I certainly enjoy the challenge and I think it's great to have change reasonably regularly - I wouldn't want to rip up the rule book every year, but the regulations had been quite stable for a while so it was time for a change. There are a lot of things to get used to: new aerodynamics, operational restrictions in testing and of course KERS, which is a technology that we've had to learn from scratch. Initially we may have been sceptical about the ability to get KERS on the car in such a short space of time, but we've managed to get our system working well and that's a credit to all the guys who have worked on our system at Renault."
Is the Australian Grand Prix a popular race with the team?"I enjoy it and I think the whole team does as it's when we get back to racing, which is ultimately what we're all here for. Melbourne is a great city and everybody looks forward to going there, although I suspect we will end up seeing a lot more of the garages in Albert Park than the city itself!"
Have you set a target you would like to see the team achieve in the first race?"The target I set at the beginning of the season is always the same: to be winning races and challenging for the championship – it would be wrong to have any other intention. However, when you start tempering your expectations with reality, you may moderate that target a little bit. Nonetheless, I do believe that we've got a car that is good enough to challenge for wins and when you combine that with our drivers and the team's ability to go racing, I'm fairly confident we can deliver a strong start to the season."
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