Renault F1: The qualities of the V6 were not enough to mask its shortcomings

The Austrian Grand Prix was once again an ordeal for Sebastian Vettel, who fell victim to an electronic problem in the early laps, causing him to lose a lap and thus jeopardizing his chances of a good showing after an already difficult qualifying.

Renault, which supplies its hybrid V6 engine to Red Bull, doesn’t know the cause of the problem, even though it occurred during the engine mapping change: « Regarding Sebastian’s car, the team experienced an issue related to the mapping change made at the start, » says Rémi Taffin on the official Renault Sport F1 website.

« We will now thoroughly investigate the reasons for this incident that cost the team valuable units today. The issue might originate from our software, but it could also be linked to other computer systems in the car, » explains the track operations manager of the brand with the diamond logo. The other systems are managed by Red Bull Racing, and as long as the root cause of the issue is unknown, analyses are necessary.

Rémi Taffin also points out the weakness of the power unit: « We must admit that we had a very complicated weekend. We arrived in Austria thinking that the characteristics of the track would not suit the Renault Energy F1 Power Unit. This one suffers on straights, but it has other qualities. Unfortunately, these strengths proved insufficient to make up the deficit. » The Spielberg circuit is favorable to engines because it is mainly composed of fast sections; moreover, 7 out of 8 Mercedes V6 turbos entered the top 10 compared to only one from Renault.

The situation has already greatly irritated the leaders of Red Bull, starting with Christian Horner, its director, who did not hesitate to call the performance and reliability of the Viry-Châtillon hybrid block “unacceptable.” Taffin concludes by calling for collaboration and promises improvements for the British Grand Prix: “Alongside Red Bull and our other teams, we will comb through all the data and come back much stronger at Silverstone in two weeks.”