Tag Archives: Renault

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F1 Off-Season News #4

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Tony Fernandes was offered £6 million from Lotus to abandon name

This is a bit of old news now, and I don’t really want to cover this silly argument much more, but it was interesting that Tony Fernandes responded to Gerard Lopez’s accusations that Team Lotus only kept the name to keep the FOM money for coming in 10th place in the championship.

So in a way Gerard Lopez was right, but Fernandes also talked about his passion for the Lotus name and how he played with his toy Lotus car when he was a boy, so he is showing that it’s about far more than money to him. I’m sure if push came to shove, he would relinquish the name reluctantly and adopt the Team Air Asia moniker as his GP2 team does. Obviously if they can come to some agreement where they keep the FOM prize money as well then that would be the best solution to this saga, as Lotus Renault GP I don’t believe can be forced to abandon the sponsorship agreement with Group Lotus.

I hope this gets sorted out very early in the season so it doesn’t drag out and allows both teams to focus on the task at hand, racing to win.

Robert Kubica‘s high speed rally crash puts season and maybe career in jeopardy

Obviously this is a big shock to everyone, a great shame for Robert and the team, and for all the F1 fans out there who desperately wanted to see him challenging for wins this season in that beautiful new black and gold car.

Apparently he was in a worse way than we were led to believe at first. We heard that he had broken an arm and a leg, which is bad enough. What we didn’t see at first though was that he had partially severed his hand in the crash. He had to wait at least 30 minutes to be cut free of the car and had to undergo 7 hour long surgery to make sure that movement in his hand was saved. Obviously, no one has to explain how vital this is to his career so it’s good to read that things have gone well so far, and in the next few days we should get a clearer idea of how it is and how long he will be out for.

Renault showed immense compassion and of course, as you would expect, put the safety of the driver above their dampened season hopes. They said that everyone at the team and Robert himself knew and understood the risks. They wouldn’t want to attempt to stop Kubica from participating in his hobby of rallying, no matter the danger, as they knew how big a part of his life it is.

Some F1 teams, and certainly teams in other sports such as football would not be so lenient and would have a kind of get out clause in the contract to allow themselves to bail out if an athlete injured themselves while participating in an activity the team banned them from. Perhaps when they signed Robert, they thought that they were lucky to have signed such a talented driver to their line-up at a time when the team were in the midst of the fallout to crash-gate. With that said however, I don’t think this really played into it too much.

Bruno Senna is the obvious choice to replace Kubica for the time he is out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another driver from Force India moving teams mid-season to replace an injured starting driver. Felipe Massa was eventually replaced by Giancarlo Fisichella and Nico Hulkenberg could be an appealing prospect, as he is currently only a test driver at that team. Then again, that could be seen as a massive snub to Senna and Grosjean who both have considerable F1 experience. It would really depend on how competitive the car is and if they think anyone else would be able to get more out of their car than the two reserves they have under contract currently.

Karun Chandhok closing on Team Lotus Test role

It has just been announced that Karun will test for the team in Jerez this week. The team clearly like the Indian former HRT driver and want to make him a permanent fixture with the team in this role. I hope this next test goes well and we see him hanging around the Team Lotus garage at each of the 20 races this year.

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Renault, Sauber and Lotus 2011 Car Launches

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The 2011 car launches are now coming thick and fast after Ferrari’s F150 was unveiled on Friday. Renault and Sauber showed off their new cars at the Valencia circuit today ahead of tomorrow’s first test there. Team Lotus decided to launch the car in their email newsletter known as Team Lotus Notes. They will arrive at the Valencia track on Wednesday and film for an extra day on Friday.

The new Renault looks much more streamlined than the last version, especially at the front of the car. Last year’s nose cone was very big and bulbous compared to most of the other cars. This year’s R31 is slimmed down and looks similar to the other new cars we’ve seen so far.

This year’s Sauber also looks very sleek and as we expected is covered with advertising for Mexican sponsors due to Sergio Perez‘s financial backing. It’s a nice looking car though and an improvement on last year. As far as performance, you would expect them to be a bit better this year but we’ll find out in Bahrain as in testing pace can easily be disguised as happened last year.

The Lotus T128 is a big improvement over the first entry by the new Norfolk based team. Not only do they now have championship winning Renault engines, but also the Red Bull technology gearbox and hydraulics. These are along with the completely redesigned aerodynamics of the new chassis. The new car is still green and yellow but beyond that the similarities appear to end. Obviously it’s still an F1 car so it can’t look too different, but the team say they have made big improvements in every area of the car. I hope they really can establish themselves as a midfield team this year but the proof will be on the track. I have a little doubt also cautiously optimistic at the same time.

As far as the livery, I really like it. They’ve made a big change the the engine cover and wing design with a prominent Air Asia logo on the engine cover. This is probably nice preparation for if and when they are forced to change their team name to that.

Mercedes also teased their new car today. The picture can be found on their own site as well as the official F1 site and Autosport. The picture is a front view of the car as rendered, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the actual physical car to make its appearance. From the image though, it appears that the new car will have a higher front nose unlike last year’s which was one of the most dramatically downward facing. As I mentioned earlier, this appears to be one of the key trends among all of the newly shown cars.

I should also mention that Renault have announced both Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean as reserve drivers for this year. It’s nice to see that Bruno is getting a chance to keep his F1 career alive after being relieved of his HRT race seat after a season in which he wasn’t really able to show what he could do in a good car. Like Nico Hulkenberg, he now has that chance so hopefully he can do well in any practise sessions he gets to drive in and put himself in the frame for a race seat in 2012. The same applies to Romain Grosjean who was replaced by Petrov at the end of 2009.

Tomorrow will see Red Bull, Mercedes GP, Williams and Toro Rosso unveil their cars. That will leave McLaren’s launch on the 4th of February, Force India on the 10th and Virgin and HRT still unconfirmed.