Renault believes to be closer to Ferrari

By role
May 12 2004

The Renault Technical team believes that they should not feel bad for not being closer to Ferrari during the race at Spain. As a matter of fact they claim most of the time the Renault R24 was close to the performance set by the Ferrari 2004.

That's the conclussion of the technical Debrief the Anglo French squad made after the Spanish Grand Prix:

The two R24s of Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso finished the Spanish Grand Prix in 3rd and 4th positions, scoring the team’s best overall result of the season so far. The performance was the fruit of much labour from the Viry and Enstone engineers throughout the weekend.

Naturally, at first sight, the two Ferraris seem untouchable. Michael Schumacher has won the first five races of the season and has never been properly challenged for the win. However, a detailed look at the laptimes from Barcelona shows that Renault has no reason to hang its head. On the contrary, in fact. Rubens Barrichello’s longest stint during his two-pitstop race lasted 26 laps. During this period, the Brazilian’s average laptime was 1:18.892. Looking at Jarno’s longest stint of his three-stop race, it lasted for 25 laps at the end of the race. At this point, with a similar fuel load to the Ferrari, the Italian’s R24 was an average of just 0.2 seconds slower, and this was in spite of the Ferrari’s average maximum speed being 8kph higher on the straight. As for Fernando, his average lap time was within a tenth of Jarno’s: 1:19.052 for the Italian, and 1:19.017 for the Spaniard. It’s hard to find a more consistent driver pairing than that!

That’s not all though. When looking at the race, the ‘ideal lap’ can be found by combining the three best sector times a driver has set during a race. When you compare the results from Fernando Alonso and race winner Michael Schumacher, it’s surprising to see that the Renault’s optimum lap time is actually marginally quicker than that of the Ferrari. Taking the best sector times, Fernando’s ‘ideal’ lap is the fastest of the race at 1:16.673 against 1:16.686 for Schumacher. The German pulls out time in the first sector where his best time is 0.3 seconds quicker than Fernando’s (thanks notably to the Ferrari’s superior straightline speed: 22.330 against 22.664. However, the Spaniard then begins a game of catch-up, running 0.2s seconds faster than the Ferrari in the second sector, and 0.1s in the final one. This strong performance through the final sector meant the R24 could not be overtaken on the straights, a fact that was well illustrated when Jarno led the race for 9 laps ahead of Schumacher.

Fernando and Jarno set the third and sixth fastest race laps respectively. The former was pushing towards the podium positions until the very end of the race, while the latter chose to manage the gap to his team-mate between his final stop and the chequered flag.