Renault: Red Bull and Toro Rosso on par, Lotus and Caterham struggling

It has become clear since the Australian Grand Prix that a division has emerged among the teams powered by Renault: those who seem to have resolved the bulk of the recurring issues—Red Bull and Toro Rosso—and those whose difficulties remain after the winter tests—Lotus and Caterham.

Rémi Taffin, head of track operations for the diamond brand, explains that Renault is moving in the right direction: “We came here with a substantial work list and we have been able to check a large number of elements and validate some software and hardware updates implemented after Australia,” he told our colleagues at GPUpdate.

Progress is especially measured in the teams that were able to take advantage of Friday’s session to carry out track time and even performance research: In many ways, we have observed improvements, with competitive times from Red Bull and Toro Rosso and a significant number of laps for these two teams. However, he explains that the Viry-Châtillon teams still have more potential to tap into: There are always improvements in the pipeline to allow drivers to get closer to the car’s full potential, but this first wave seems to be working well.

On the Caterham side, Kamui Kobayashi focused on the difficulties: « At Caterham, Kamui Kobayashi’s battery developed a fault, and we had to change it after a few laps. We were ready for FP2, but the chassis team discovered a throttle leak, so he lost even more time. » For Marcus Ericsson, however, the day was calmer but not perfect: « Marcus had a better day, but he couldn’t set a perfect lap due to a software issue affecting traction. »

The situation of the Lotus team was catastrophic, with less than twenty laps completed: Lotus had another very difficult day with very limited running. This morning, we had some mapping issues with Romain’s car, and then Pastor stopped due to an engine and turbo-related problem. Romain was able to do more laps but still suffers from low traction and then had a series of gearbox issues.

Free practice sessions are what they are, and the constraints of the Kuala Lumpur circuit will inevitably manifest for the engines when the teams raise their level during qualifying and race: « These are the unique challenges of Sepang that we must solve. Cooling in very high temperatures is incredibly important, so we have tried different solutions to keep temperatures under control. One way to maximize speed is to keep the temperature of the air entering the thermal engine at a low level, which was a key factor among the teams today. »