Renault Power Unit Hardware & Software

[RedNEO]

Renault "played with fire" in engine performance push

“Clearly, the big negative in 2017 has been reliability, which has cost a lot – to our team, but also to our customer teams, for which I feel sorry,” Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.

“But we had to be very aggressive in order to create the platform to complete the convergence with the other power unit manufacturers.

“It was a combination of a completely new engine, and therefore a lack of dyno mileage over the winter - we discovered some of the issues at the winter test, and also some of them at the start of the season, which was very late [for us] to react and to implement improvements.

“Later into the season, we played a little bit with the fire by unlocking new performance modes, which had some impact also on reliability, and we also had the issue that there was some cooling measure to respect that some teams struggled to follow.”

“We found new ways of operating the engine with more performance, which created the first batch of problems,” Abiteboul added.

“With more mileage, we started to have reliability issues related to simply the life of the parts.

“We tried to manage that by reducing the operating temperature, which some teams managed to do, but not all teams.”

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... nt-992054/

Good news for McLaren since they will inherit a better engine because of all the leg work done last year. It’s only fair considering what they endured the last three years.

[FPV GTHO]

Didnt Cyril try and blame Toro Rosso for not matching the cooling requirements of the engine? Now it turns out the engine development went outside the initial cooling requirements.

[factory_p]

F1i.com:

Renault Sport F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul says the manufacturer's current power deficit to Mercedes can be traced back to a decision taken by Flavio Briatore over ten years ago!

"Today, we continue to pay the price for Flavio Briatore's decision back in 2007 to fire hundreds of people when it was decided to freeze engine development.

Cyril is really stretching the blame here !!!

I am not a Flavio fan, but this is borderline ridiculous !!

Absolutely, this guy talks sometimes really crazy stuff.
In addition Renault is also to blame, for me it's hard to believe it was Briatores sole responsibility. I think the Renault board did contribute as well.

As much as I agree that Briatore didn't make such decisions on his own, I believe he is right in saying the engine freeze situation has cost them a lot in the new engine formula. Which good engineer wants to spend several years optimizing the radii used on the head cover? The really brilliant guys fled from F1 (and went towards WEC for instance) because of the lack of freedom for inventing new things. Hence why Ferrari also struggled in the 1st year of this new era. It's only that they reacted better and faster and perhaps they succeeded better than Renault in keeping engineers onboard during the freeze period. Maybe because they could get these engineers interested in working on other Ferrari projects easier than Renault could - I mean, a LaFerrari V12 or a 488 turbo V8 is sexier than a diesel 4 cylinder for a Clio....

[Jejking]

F1i.com:

Renault Sport F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul says the manufacturer's current power deficit to Mercedes can be traced back to a decision taken by Flavio Briatore over ten years ago!

"Today, we continue to pay the price for Flavio Briatore's decision back in 2007 to fire hundreds of people when it was decided to freeze engine development.

Cyril is really stretching the blame here !!!

I am not a Flavio fan, but this is borderline ridiculous !!

No, I do NOT agree with this. You are very much mistaken: the first signs of a new turbo + hybrid era were popping up WAY sooner than the V8 era ended. Longterm you're going to see a massive impact when you fire a large amount of people. This case is pretty heavily connected to the lag they experience now with the performance situation, the scene changed completely and it takes ages to catch up. Around 2007-2009 KERS development especially sped up, the largest gains were made in that time period with the first KERS editions were developed. The turbo designs and implementation came 'a bit' later, by that time the snowball was already rolling. The introduction of the hybrid era was even being delayed by a year to give everybody the chance to get ready in time.

Sources:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/92727 ... ngine-plan
http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/13878359

[Manoah2u]

Actually, it is low, and again, not taking responsibility. It's the 'he did it' tactic and it's very childish.
Additionally it's rather stupid of Cyril to say such a thing, as it would only imply that the people that stayed after Flavio's supposed 'firing spree' were, and still (since some are still around) are, incompetent.

Added to that; was flavio the one running the Renault engine department?
If there's really any blame of recent, it would have to be when Lotus/Genii caused a total exodus of personel.

The more Cyril opens his mouth, the more i start to cringe.

[factory_p]

Actually, it is low, and again, not taking responsibility. It's the 'he did it' tactic and it's very childish.
Additionally it's rather stupid of Cyril to say such a thing, as it would only imply that the people that stayed after Flavio's supposed 'firing spree' were, and still (since some are still around) are, incompetent.

How could they be competent? Take a young engineer who joined Renault in 2009 without much experience. All the engine development he has ever seen would have been some minimal evolutions on the V8, refining small things under the engine freeze regulation. What would he know about designing a turbo hybrid V6 from scratch?

Competent people in RSF1 would have been those who had designed the first V8 or the first V10. But the lead enginners of these projects were probably either retired or gone out of boredom when the development of the 2014 PU started. I think that's what Cyril implies there. The responsibility of Briatore in this is another topic.

[Jolle]

F1i.com:






Cyril is really stretching the blame here !!!

I am not a Flavio fan, but this is borderline ridiculous !!

Absolutely, this guy talks sometimes really crazy stuff.
In addition Renault is also to blame, for me it's hard to believe it was Briatores sole responsibility. I think the Renault board did contribute as well.

As much as I agree that Briatore didn't make such decisions on his own, I believe he is right in saying the engine freeze situation has cost them a lot in the new engine formula. Which good engineer wants to spend several years optimizing the radii used on the head cover? The really brilliant guys fled from F1 (and went towards WEC for instance) because of the lack of freedom for inventing new things. Hence why Ferrari also struggled in the 1st year of this new era. It's only that they reacted better and faster and perhaps they succeeded better than Renault in keeping engineers onboard during the freeze period. Maybe because they could get these engineers interested in working on other Ferrari projects easier than Renault could - I mean, a LaFerrari V12 or a 488 turbo V8 is sexier than a diesel 4 cylinder for a Clio....

He whole reason for the engine freeze was that manufacturers would fire hundreds or engineers... aka cost savings...

[baybars]

We are changing only the parts that will make a difference to the performance, whereas last year pretty much everything – internal combustion engine and hybrid – was new.

"We're also changing our internal procedure on sign-off, and making sure to be much more draconian in the way we are dealing with project milestones and sign-off of any new part.

"I'm very confident what we are doing on the dyno is very representative and will provide a product that is much more mature as soon as the winter tests

Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... ty-994257/

[Blackout]

Do you know how a 2017 MGUH looks? Tim Goss said something strange about the Renault; according to him the H hangs between the compressor and the turbine... but it's hard to believe because some pictures show that the space between the C and the T is quite tiny... so if this is true, the H should look like a disc or a camembert box whereas the 2014 H was a KERS-like long cylinder and did sit in the V... Is that possible?
And the rules suggest that the H units are much lignter than the K...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0yC6BAWEAAlsJU.jpg:large

[noname]

Do you know how a 2017 MGUH looks? (...)

Since 2014 Renault's MGU-H looks like on the picture you attached. They will continue with this configuration in 2018.

[Blackout]

Did you read what I just said

"The Mercedes/Honda approach is you have the compressor on the front of the engine, the turbine on the back of the engine and the MGU-H sat in the middle of the V.
"The Ferrari/Renault approach is that you have got the compressor sat at the back of the engine, the MGU-H behind it and the turbine behind that." https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... ar-996655/
Other sources said the Renault MGUH is outside the V in 2017.

[FPV GTHO]

Moving the MGUH out of the v seems like a backwards step. What would it benefit, more room for the variable trumpets?

[ringo]

Its not really a backward step.
You can make it lower than if it were in the V.
The only draw back is that you have more weight, it and the turbine, away from the COG longitudinally.
Cooling benefit is hit and miss, you can get more cooling air, but at the same time its closer to the turbine.

[GhostF1]

Its not really a backward step.
You can make it lower than if it were in the V.
The only draw back is that you have more weight, it and the turbine, away from the COG longitudinally.
Cooling benefit is hit and miss, you can get more cooling air, but at the same time its closer to the turbine.

You think it could be positioned any lower than
the Honda/Merc setup?
Looking at Honda's engine photos, their turbine has hardly any space between the bottom of it and the flywheel. So at their positioning, it would be nearly impossible to drop it further as it's driven off the turbine and it would interfere with the flywheel and gearbox even more.

Not to mention the Renault approach, Goss said the turbine is well into the gearbox housing. I can't imagine there is any available real estate to go lower. So it's unlikely there is any measurable CoG advantage.

[r101]

Its not really a backward step.
You can make it lower than if it were in the V.
The only draw back is that you have more weight, it and the turbine, away from the COG longitudinally.
Cooling benefit is hit and miss, you can get more cooling air, but at the same time its closer to the turbine.

You think it could be positioned any lower than
the Honda/Merc setup?
Looking at Honda's engine photos, their turbine has hardly any space between the bottom of it and the flywheel. So at their positioning, it would be nearly impossible to drop it further as it's driven off the turbine and it would interfere with the flywheel and gearbox even more.

Not to mention the Renault approach, Goss said the turbine is well into the gearbox housing. I can't imagine there is any available real estate to go lower. So it's unlikely there is any measurable CoG advantage.

Just a naive question: If on Renault engine all elements are outside the 'V', why cannot both turbine and everything else be much lower than on Merc/Honda? Is it illegal to do so, or there simply isn't any space in the packaging?