Hi acro, glad to meet you. I have a soft spot in my heart with the Renault 111 degree engine. It was a decision to locate the engine mass as low as possible to give better handling than their competitors. To me, that was when Renault set themselves apart from the crowd, which later culminated in their present status.
the ultra short stroke seems typical for ultra high reving engines. the cutaway would be interesting because on some (rare) pictures at the 111 deg renault , especially looking at the position of the both intake trompete rows, it seems that this engine worked without a bank offset. such constructions indeed exists, in this case we do not have two independent conrods at the opposite pistons but one "main" rod and the opposite secondary rod is not connected to the crankase but to the main rod , what eliminates bank offset. some big V diesel engines (e.g the emd,s in locomotives in usa/canada) work this way, but it would be interesting if somebody tried to manage this in formula 1 engines at this high revolutions. the benefit would be a slightly shorter engine due to lack of bank offset.
