Does anyone know what the problem is?


Losing Alonso may account for some of it, but this kind of drop off in
performance is truly surprising.

Art MacNeil wrote:
Michelin leaving F1. Renault and Michelin had the same sort of
relationship Ferarri and Bridgestone had. Michelin was very close with
Renault and made tires that suited the Renault exceptionally good.

Carel

"Carel" <carel (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl> wrote

more likely explanation.

Art MacNeil wrote:

From http://www.formula1.com/news/5938.html

"Q: (Marco Evangelisti -Corriere dello Sport) Heikki, Felipe and Lewis:
this year McLaren is clearly more competitive than the last few
championships; Renault the opposite. Is Alonso switching from one team
to the other a key factor in this improvement and why?
HK: Obviously, if you ask the question to me, it’s not a problem.
Clearly (the difference in) our pace compared to the front runners is
so big - I think the engineers have calculated it at about 1.8 percent
in terms of lap time – so I don’t think even Alonso would be able to
overcome that deficit. That’s not what we’re looking at the moment.
We’re clearly trying to understand the car better, give it better
feeling for the driver, so we are able to push more. That’s my opinion.
FM: I think Alonso, for sure, is a great driver. I think the driver’s
point of view in terms of developing the car is very important. I think
that is important, for sure. But I don’t think it’s just because of
Fernando. I think, clearly, Renault has a kind of problem to put
everything together in some areas and I think McLaren made a step
forwards. Fernando started the testing, just at the beginning of the
season, the car was already there, it was ready, so for sure, by then,
it was important to develop the car but I think the car was already
born. So I think clearly Renault made a step back but they must maybe
have a reason, maybe in the tyres or whatever, and McLaren made a step
forward. That’s clear. We saw that last year Fernando and Giancarlo
were always there. This year, Giancarlo and Heikki are not there any
more, so it’s clear that they have some problems.
LH: I think that what’s most important is the transition from Michelins
to Bridgestones. For all the teams, apart from Ferrari, it’s had a
major impact on the way the car works and I think Renault have
struggled. I think we’re fortunate to hit the ground running but not
have as much of a problem with the tyres. I think Fernando’s had a huge
impact on the team. His enthusiasm, his experience has definitely
brought a lot to the team in terms of developing the car and pushing
the team forward. But I think where we have mainly improved is just
that the team has really pulled together this year. Even towards the
end of last year, they’ve really said OK, this is it. We need to
develop the car for next year, we want to win. They are all extremely
enthusiastic and determined to get the win, they can smell it in the
air, so they’ve worked extremely hard to make sure that the steps that
have been made to develop the car have mainly all been positive and so
I think the main improvement has come from the team really: people
pulling themselves together, we’ve got two new drivers, it’s exciting
for the team, new sponsors, so it’s a whole new package and I think
they just all wanted it to go extremely well and smoothly and it has. "

Thanks to Bird for the link.

--
Paul-B