As we rapidly approach the fourth round of the 2017 Formula One Championship season, the Russian GP, Renault's Chief Technical Officer Bob Bell has taken a look back at how the French team has performed to date, especially their double top ten qualifying performance in Bahrain just under two weeks ago, and discusses what areas they need to focus on to make the R.S.17 more competitive.
What's the outlook heading to Russia?
We head to Sochi with a reasonable degree of optimism. We have shown a good progression so far in 2017, most notably illustrated by qualifying both cars in the top ten for the first time in Bahrain as well as securing our first points finish. There's no doubt we have work still to do, equally it's clear we've taken a tangible step forward.
Where's the current focus of development?
It's pretty clear and we're not under any illusion; we are currently qualifying better than we race and that's a symptom of our current car performance. We have a reasonable understanding of why this is and have a number of developments to address this in the realm of aerodynamics and suspension. We tested new parts – including a new front wing – in Bahrain designed to add more aero-performance to the car and also make it slightly more benign to engender better race pace. It's a positive of testing somewhere where you've just had a Grand Prix that there is a lot of comparable data for evaluation.
Why does the car seem to qualify better than it races?
The R.S.17 is not as well balanced as we'd like over a full stint. Whilst you can get away with this over the course of a qualifying lap – where fresh tyres can mask the balance issue – the performance is less consistent when you take to the longer runs of race stints. The R.S.17 has a somewhat nervous corner entry, followed by mid-turn understeer, followed by a nervous exit making finding traction a challenge. If we can address these areas, our drivers will have a very effective race car at their disposal. We believe the problems are aero related, so we're primarily looking for the solution there. Once we have the entryphase of the corner sorted, the rest should follow more easily. The big positive is that the car has the basic pace to be able to be qualified well. Our current issue is extracting that pace in a race scenario. If you have the pace the key is maintaining it; it's easier to translate qualifying pace to race pace than to find basic performance.
What's wanted in Russia?
Our target for Sochi is another step forward from our performance in Bahrain. We'd be happy with a similar qualifying position allied to improved race pace.
