Ask Tim: Why F1 should expect fireworks from Alonso-Ocon in 2021

Were you surprised to see Fernando Alonso sign with Renault? And will Renault be able to manage him better than McLaren did?

Joe Childs, via email

I wouldn't say I was surprised, no. I've always had a feeling that Fernando wasn't finished with Formula 1. For the team, it's a bit of a coup, but with Sebastian Vettel on the market he's probably jumped at the chance to come back in. He's now 38, and will be 39 when the season starts, so knows he's going to be at the end of his racing career fairly soon.

I think he's grabbed it because he likes to be in the limelight and he's not got a full programme this year, which will be difficult at this stage of his career. But he's still fit and hungry, he can still achieve great things and I'm sure he will have gained an enormous amount from doing LMP1 with Toyota.

But even without that experience of broadening his horizons, he will bring a lot to the team because he knows what he wants from the car. Cyril Abiteboul is going to have his work cut out to keep him happy because you can't have any bullshit with Fernando, he'll expect the best.

I don't think Renault is going to do any worse than McLaren did, but it has got to be on top of it's game. In that sense, working with Daniel Ricciardo can only be a benefit for the team because Fernando is going to be even more demanding.

PLUS: How Renault plans to manage the 'new' Alonso

The thing I always remember, which was at the beginning of the end of his first spell at Renault, was a test at Jerez. There must have been five guys in the truck looking after the data. I was attending in my role as head of reliability at that time and I remember Fernando was sat in the car in the garage asking about what they were going to do next. When he was told, 'you're going to have to give us five minutes while the guys all look at stuff and we'll come up with a suggestion', you could tell he was just totally pissed off at that sort of situation.

Whether he's successful or not, he'll bring a lot to F1 too. At the moment we're in danger of losing Vettel from the grid, which would have left us with only Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen of the current drivers having won a world title, so it will be good to have another world champion in the mix for the young guys to benchmark themselves against, especially for new team-mate Esteban Ocon.

Given how aggressive he was defending against Ricciardo in the Styrian Grand Prix when he was on soft tyres that were obviously past their best, Ocon is clearly set on making the most of the chance to get his feet under the table and make the team his own. We could see some fireworks there in 2021...

Before last season, and particularly when the car looked unbeatable in winter testing, there was a spate of stories about how the culture at Ferrari had changed, there was a new openness and spirit, with much credit being given to Maurizio Arrivabene being replaced by Mattia Binotto. As the year wore on, however, the team seemed to be in its usual state of semi-disarray, and this year looks even worse with a draggy car, hobbled engine, and abrupt dismissal of the driver who is third on the all-time F1 winners list. So, what is the real problem?

Michael Sturm, via email

Maybe it is because he's not got enough support from higher up, but I don't get the feeling that Binotto is a strong enough personality in his own right to be the team principal. Without actually being around and seeing what goes on, it's difficult to know - but a bit like McLaren did a few seasons ago, Ferrari seems to have lost it's way and it's going to take strong personalities to bring it all back together again.

The team seems to be in a state of panic and it would appear that the problem starts at the top. Binotto does not seem to have any control over his drivers, and for him to say that there is no point in reading them the riot act to my mind shows how ineffectual he is.

Back in 1988 at McLaren, when Prost and Senna started their feud, Ron Dennis flew down to Pembrey (yes!) where we were testing and had both drivers in the back of the truck for an hour, with the result that Senna was reduced to tears.

You want someone like Jean Todt back there to thump the desk and know the right people to talk to in order to get things done. Flavio Briatore was as blunt as you could ever be, but he got things done. Binotto by contrast looks like too nice a person. He's clever, but he hasn't got the control that he needs. Maybe he'd be better off focusing on the technical director role he held previously, with a real motivational force coming in over him.

I would be surprised if it lasts much longer as it is before the board starts to intervene. As good as the drivers are, they can't carry that car around any better than they are. Qualifying 10th and 11th is just ridiculous.

Binotto admitted afterwards that it's performance wasn't good enough for Ferrari, but it's one thing to know there's an issue and quite another to rectify it.

Getting that car up where it should be is going to take a lot of work. Even when I saw it at Barcelona, it was obvious straightaway from the straight-line speed that something was wrong drag-wise. The new front wings and floors they brought to Austria haven't fixed that, so the engineers back at Maranello have got to be looking in all the other areas. Ferrari was clearly doing something with the engine last year so obviously it's lost a little bit of the power advantage, but it's a lot more than that.

I would have thought Carlos Sainz would be worried watching on because if the updates that Ferrari brought to the Styrian Grand Prix were the ones that it hoped were going to work at Budapest, then it really is in trouble.

If they didn't work in Austria, then they're not going to work any better in Hungary. Unless Binotto gets something moving back at the factory and the windtunnel, it's going to be a long season for the scarlet cars.

If those brake ducts from the Racing Point are illegal would they be able to install others without any problem before next weekend's Hungarian GP?

Jan Sargeant, via Twitter

Even though Renault says it only delayed its protest so it didn't overshadow the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, which already had Red Bull protesting the Mercedes DAS system, I still would have thought this will have taken Racing Point by surprise.

PLUS: Why misfortune has masked Racing Point's dark horse

The team responded to say that the Renault protest was 'ill-founded', but certainly looking at the pictures, you would have to say they're virtually identical. Maybe inside, the uprights may not be quite the same, but the team is unlikely to be able to do anything radically different for Hungary this weekend given the short turnaround time.

Unless it's something that the team back at Silverstone had already been working on, in a week, there's no way that they can get three or four car sets made that would be different and compromise what they already know.

After all, you can't unlearn what you already know.

Should other teams now look into developing their own DAS systems?

Karl Davis, via email

Unless they've been working on something for some time, been able to test it and understand exactly what it gives them, I wouldn't think anyone would go anywhere near DAS in the near future.

Any advantage that a team might get would be tempered with the knowledge that the investment won't have any return beyond this year anyway. To my mind, that's too much of a compromise to think about running something like that now.

I still have my doubts as to the value of DAS. It's all to do with cooling the tyres on the main straight because you don't need the toe out, then having the toe out again in the corners. Obviously it gives Mercedes something, or it wouldn't bother running it, and somewhere like Barcelona I can imagine it would bear fruit because you've got a long straight and swoopy curves where you need the toe out that you don't need on the main straight. But somewhere like Hungary, I don't think it's going to give the team very much because the straight is not really long enough to get an advantage.

Regardless, I hope all the clamour about it dies down soon. One TV pundit made a comment that it was adding a lot of weight high up, but that's plainly not the case. It all happens down by the steering rack or on the front bulkhead.

When you know a race is likely to be dry, how do you approach a wet qualifying session knowing parc ferme rules mean you won't be able to change it afterwards?

Gordon Baxter, via email

Teams can easily change wing settings on the grid, not that I noticed anybody particularly doing that. They can also change the wing angle during the pitstops as well.

But I think that in a scenario like the one we saw on Saturday, you just have to go with the car set-up that you want to race. It would be a compromise, which makes it all the more remarkable when you consider some of the performances on display with midfielders qualifying way ahead of where they would normally be on the grid.

For a proper wet set-up, you change a lot of things. Maybe even springs, cambers, anti-rollbars, wings, all of this kind of thing. But in that sort of situation where you are in parc ferme and not allowed to change too many things means your hands are tied. You might make a little tweak with the wings, but other than that, you just have to go with it.

McLaren has had the fastest lap at both races so far and seems to be getting its act together at last. What do you think is the next step that it needs to make to continue its progression?

Rachel Evans, via email

It's a difficult one with the races coming up so thick and fast. Like everyone, the McLaren engineers are constantly looking at ways to improve the performance and trying at the very least to keep pace with the development of other teams, because everyone is still relatively early in their understanding of the current cars.

It will be a continual round of updates for the car. I'm sure it will find bits and pieces with faster tracks like Silverstone coming up, but you don't qualify on row two on merit twice in a row by luck, so I would anticipate that McLaren will stay where it is and maybe start to push Racing Point a bit more if it has to start making drastic changes to comply with the rules.

F1 thrives on good stories and McLaren getting back to a competitive position again certainly is one. All credit to the team for dragging itself back from where it was a few seasons ago.

I recently watched the documentary film on Bruce McLaren and the work ethic that came through so strongly in the film I believe is really showing in what the team is doing now.

Andreas Seidl has brought some really good experience to the team and that's coincided with the much-needed restructuring of personnel away from the matrix system that it had for the last decade or more.

He's got it streamlined and working efficiently as it should be. There are still people there that I worked with who knew what it took in the old days, but of course as teams change and grow it sort of lost its way, so I'm pleased to see that he's brought it back together again.

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