The flaw that caused F1's latest civil war

Renault's turbo problems took Red Bull out of the fight for victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix. After its reliability setbacks in Mexico, in Sao Paulo it had to compromise its turbo usage even though Interlagos is only 780 metres above sea level compared with 2285 metres for the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

These turbos have a regulated maximum rotation speed of 125,000rpm, and with the less dense air at altitude the only way to get back the lost engine performance is to run it as near to the maximum as possible for as long as you can. But this brings a certain set of challenges.

Time between races is too short to diagnose and solve issues related to rotational speed, so the only way to improve reliability in the short term is to limit that speed. Even then, I'm pretty sure there would have been a lot of Renault personnel spending the race with their fingers crossed.

That brings us onto the big talking point of the weekend - engine politics.

Renault tried to blame Toro Rosso for the turbo problems it has endured. Team principal Franz Tost retaliated by laying the blame firmly at Renault's door. That led to all hell breaking lose, and there was even talk of withdrawing engines! A quick apology from Helmut Marko resolved the situation. For now...

So, who was right and who was wrong?

Well, Renault should be fully aware of how Toro Rosso installs and utilises its power unit. It has personnel embedded with the team to look after its component supply. There should be no surprises for Renault, so to blame Toro Rosso for its problems is a bit much.

As far as Toro Rosso is concerned, the team pays a lot of money to Renault for a product. So after suffering reliability problems, it is correct to be a little bit frustrated. Basically the product it has been supplied with has been, on many occasions, not fit for purpose.

Perhaps Franz, whom I know pretty well and can be very forthright, went a little bit over the top to suggest Renault was doing it deliberately to assist in its battle with Toro Rosso in the constructors' championship. Surely a company as mighty as Renault would never do something as underhand as that... would it?

Given we are now coming to the end of the 2017 season, perhaps it's the right time to look again at the wider situation with the power units. First up, the stupid grid penalties for using extra engines and/or ancillary components.

This year, each driver was allowed four units otherwise they suffered a multitude of grid penalties. Yes, as Mercedes showed - and Ferrari nearly showed - it is possible to build and run a power unit within this requirement, but it does nothing for the racing. The penalties inflicted on teams when they have a problem does even less for it.

Compared with the early noughties, when a top team would get through something like 60 engine rebuild lives in a season, having only four is a fairly dramatic reduction. It is all done to save money, but in reality doesn't do much for that because the power unit manufacturers will have built many more than four per car and run them to destruction on the dyno to prove their reliability.

To help the smaller teams to survive something needs to be done to take a bit from the rich and pass it on to the poor. We need a Robin Hood F1...

I would have to agree with Lewis Hamilton when he says going to three for 2018 'sucks', and also with Christian Horner when he says he believes five is the correct number. I would actually add in another 'wildcard PU' that could only be used if a team could prove that they had a suspected problem created by an outside influence beyond its control.

For example, if an over-excited marshal sprayed fire extinguisher powder into or around the power unit, or an accident caused by another driver which, say, punctured a radiator, which led to a loss of fluid and/or overheating.

That would make it five engines plus one that the team could call on before any penalties. The engine manufacturers would not have to build any more than they currently do and it would lead to much better and harder racing.

I would also add in a wildcard gearbox for exactly the same reasons. It's very easy to suffer damage to a gearbox when some other car runs into you.

Also, to help the smaller teams to survive, something needs to be done to take a bit from the rich and pass it on to the poor. Basically, we need a Robin Hood F1 and since it's the big teams that manufacture the power units, it is an ideal thing to legislate on the price of the units and service.

As I wrote in my Ask Gary column last week, if I were involved with the decision making I would define the price of a season's engine supply and service. It would be very easy to police as it would be clearly established what a team is paying and what a manufacturer supplies.

Currently it is around €20m. For 2018 that should be reduced to €15m, for 2019 €12m and for 2020 €10m. This would be the price going forward, plus the average inflation of Germany, Japan, UK and Italy, or any other country involved in the direct manufacture of the engine packages.

From there, you then allow the current manufacturers (plus any others interested) to get together and come up with a package that will meet certain requirements.

For 2021, supply is five plus one units plus service and the cost is €10m plus inflation as above. The FIA or Liberty Media don't need to define the package, just allow the manufacturers to do that and then the FIA just needs to police it.

I think other manufacturers would be interested in this approach since it would be clearly defined, and it would be up to them to define the basic principles to match their road car production philosophy. It would resolve the problem of someone always telling them what they need to do and them pushing back against it. The ball would be in their court.

Looking on track at Interlagos, when Lewis Hamilton hit the wall on his first timed lap in qualifying, it showed anyone can make a mistake or get caught out. He doesn't make many of those types of errors and he is normally very good at feeling and driving to the track's grip level. That's why he's so good in wet conditions.

I don't think it was all his fault. The rear of the car was bouncing a little over the bumps, which probably led to a diffuser stall and with it inconsistent rear grip. That was enough for the rear to just let go. Even for a driver at the top of his game, there was not enough warning to allow him to catch it.

From what I am sure he felt was a disaster on Saturday, he turned things round on Sunday. It must have been one of his most enjoyable races of the year as he came through to fourth.

Yes, the podium would have been better, but passing cars running at a similar pace is very difficult. The Mercedes also seems to lose a lot of overall downforce, and especially front-end grip, when following another car. When that happens, you just eat the tyres up, and while the leaders were managing their pace, Hamilton with his fresh engine and nothing to lose put the hammer down from start to finish.

With the current technical regulations meaning that the cars just can't get close to each other for very long before they destroy their tyres, it means that the racing looks a lot worse than it is. Having to drive with at least a two-second gap between cars means that the casual viewers just doesn't know what's going on and it looks like it is just a procession. Sometimes that's true but not always.

If there were to be only one change to the regulations in the near future it must be to address this. We want to see closer racing involving more cars.

At the front, qualifying was very close. Bottas was on pole with a 1m08.322s and Vettel second with a 1m08.360s - that's a 0.038 seconds difference between two different chassis, engines, different teams and different drivers. These cars cross the start finish line in Sao Paulo at around 300 km/h, and if they had started their qualifying lap side by side there would have only been 3.166 meters between them. That's less than a car's length!

On a side note, I have to say I was impressed with George Russell in the Force India. Considering this was his first official practice session at a grand prix he did a very competent job, and his interview afterwards on Sky Sports F1 with Ted Kravitz and Johnny Herbert was very professional. He is definitely someone for the future.

A season doing F2 in 2018 will allow him to learn the F1 tracks, and the ones they don't race at he could do FP1 with Force India. Then, if Esteban Ocon moves on to the Mercedes works team he would be in an perfect position to become a race driver at Force India - or whatever it is called in the future - come 2019.