Ask Gary: Why has Renault got worse?

Why has the Renault power unit become even less reliable/driveable than it was in 2014?
@LauraLeslie23, via Twitter

Renault got so much flak last year from Red Bull that it made some changes in technical management. Over time, this might be the right thing to do but in the short term, I am afraid Renault will have to suffer some pain.

Each of the engine companies has to work with engine-development tokens. First of all, you have to recognise where you are weak and then come up with solutions to these various problems. Having these tokens to use means you have to be more disciplined in your development direction then ever before.

The basic answer to your question is that Renault has used most of the engine-development tokens in the wrong areas.

Unless you have a stable and well-defined staff structure, then everyone will want to go off in their own direction and that only leads to confusion. Usually, when this sort of thing happens, the people who end up making decisions are not the right people.

As far as the driveability is concerned, the power unit consists of the engine itself and the turbo. On top of that is the power from the ERS. Getting all of this to work together is no easy thing.

Renault, in its pursuit of more overall power, has got the balance of all this wrong. This has led to peaky power, which no driver likes. When you have peaky power you get excess wheelspin, which in turn destroys the rear tyres.

We've had best drivers, worst cars and shocking moments. But what's your funniest moment from F1, Gary?
@StegTheDinosaur, via Twitter

I don't think this is something that I can answer while sober!

I remember Mark Hughes, Simon Arron, Tony Dodgins, David Kennedy, Declan Quigley and myself having an evening of hilarity in Magny-Cours over a few glasses of red wine and a barbecue one year! Mind you, there was not much to do in Magny-Cours so perhaps if we had been at another race it wouldn't have been quite so funny.

I suppose one of the funniest was in Rio in the late 1970s when I was with McLaren. We had a toilet in each of the garages. But Brazilian plumbing and James Hunt didn't really mix. He had a nasty habit of blocking these with regularity.

Please don't try this at home...

For some reason, as chief mechanic it was my responsibility to clear it out ready for the next time. So I put this plastic sheet over the top of the toilet and trapped it with the toilet seat. I then stuffed an airline through a hole in the centre of the plastic sheet and attacked the drains with about 100psi air pressure. No problem - drain cleared and we were ready for the next time.

Lotus - that is the real, original Lotus team - was in the garage next door to us and the next morning one of its guys came around to our garage for a chat. He was laughing his head off, so I asked what was wrong. He explained that, the day before, Peter Warr, who was Lotus's team manager, was standing having a pee in their garage toilet when the toilet exploded.

I suppose what goes down must come up somewhere. I just didn't think it would be that close.

As I said to the Lotus mechanic, you just can't trust Brazilian drains.

If there was another rules overhaul, can you see McLaren taking advantage and getting back to the top like Mercedes did in 2014?
@LenM4, via Twitter

The regulation change for 2014 was more about the power unit than the chassis. Mercedes has done the best job in this department and the chassis personnel have backed it up admirably.

When Honda ran away from F1 at the end of 2008, the team now called Mercedes became Brawn GP. It did a fantastic job of adapting to the regulations and went on to win the championship with Jenson Button. Once it became Mercedes, it underachieved until 2014. But in 2009, Ross Brawn's small team could react quickly under his leadership.

I'm sorry to say that I don't think McLaren is that good at adapting. Over the past few regulation changes, when the season started McLaren seemed to always be playing catch-up as opposed to leading the field.

I'm not really sure why this is, but since McLaren lost Adrian Newey to Red Bull it seems to have lost that one-man leadership that is so important when it comes to taking advantage of a regulation change.

Adrian led the technical organisation at McLaren - like most companies, in other words, like a pyramid - but McLaren wanted a flat leadership with equal importance given to all the different disciplines that make up a current F1 car.

This was done to remove the importance of any one person. But I think this leads the company into being more of an oil tanker than a nimble speedboat. When you have a regulation change, you need to react and react quickly.

There are so many bits and pieces involved in the power-unit packaging that everything is very important.

Having the turbo mounted low like Ferrari has will allow it to have shorter primary exhaust pipes. This means the exhaust energy getting to the turbo will be improved. This, in turn, means that the MGU-H will be able to create more power.

Running the exhaust tailpipe through the gearbox, as Ferrari has done, will have very little effect in itself. It is what it allows you to do with the cooling systems that will improve the overall performance.

It's all about detail, every little bit counts and Ferrari has done a really good job this year - or at least it has done a much better job than Renault at closing the gap to Mercedes.

But there is still a long way to go.

Do all of the crew members who participate in pitstops have other duties within the team or are there some who only specialise in that?
Bruce Tomlin, via Facebook

All of the people involved in the pitstops are either mechanics, tyre men or truckies. There are probably 16-18 people involved in each team and they are selected from a group of up to 60 people who attend the races.

The difference now compared with the past is that the teams have realised that both physical and mental fitness is very important. So they will all train for their new job on a Sunday afternoon.

This training is one of the things that have meant that the pitstop times have been reduced so dramatically over the past few years.

They will also practice pitstops more efficiently than in the past. It is not about doing more and more pitstops to try to be faster, it is about doing a small amount consistently and efficiently. After that they will study them and see where time can be saved.

All that said, I think the pitstops, at roughly three seconds, are too fast and the viewer sees nothing. If I was involved in the decision-making process I would reduce the amount of people involved in the pitstop to something like seven - one man on each wheel, a front jack man, a rear jack man and a lollypop man to control the car exit.

With this group, it would expect a stop of around seven seconds, which would give enough time to actually see it happen. It would also change the emphasis on pitstop strategy.

Following the Mercedes problems in Bahrain, can you give a brief explanation of how brake-by-wire braking systems work and what happens when they fail?
Michael Fulford, via email

This is an interesting question on a topic that I believe could end up with severe consequences.

Every team will have a different way of going about its own individual system, but here's how it basically works:

The ERS battery pack is charged up by the rear axle during braking. In other words, it is like a very large alternator that is only switched on when the driver presses the brake pedal and the energy required to slow the car down charges the battery pack.

Remember, this is only working on the rear axle as the front axle is completely hydraulic.

The cars still have a rear hydraulic braking system but as any performance-orientated team would do to save weight, Mercedes has reduced the size of this rear hydraulic system dramatically. After all, while you have the recharge system you don't need it.

The main problem is that, like an aircraft, there are many fail modes on these cars. They will always fail to a 'get you home' status.

If, for example, the battery pack is getting too hot it will automatically reject the charge during braking, leaving you with an inadequate rear brake system to do all the work on its own.

Given warning and time, the driver will adapt to any situation fairly quickly. But from my point of view, when he does will he be driving a car that has a major safety issue?

Brake failure is not something to take lightly. The driver in the car always knows about these things before anyone else because it is the other cars around you that don't have a clue and it is one of those that could very easily get wiped out.

A lot of people are talking about the World Endurance Championship becoming more popular than F1 because of exciting racing and the technical challenge. Do you think it can be overtake F1?
Adrian Wells, via email

The WEC is a great championship and technically it is at a very advanced stage. When you consider that WEC cars are doing 24-hour races reliably it just shows the level of engineering involved.

A 24-hour race is equivalent to roughly 14 grands prix. I know that everything is designed to work in the environment that it has to compete in, but still that is no mean achievement.

So, onto the question: will it overtake F1 as the top motorsport event? I don't think so. For me, a very big percentage of the viewers and spectators will watch the first 15 minutes of a race and then, if it is not all-action, they will go and mow the lawn and might just come back for the end.

It is left to the TV companies and the commentators to try to keep the audience's attention. In a grand prix that lasts about one hour and 40 minutes, I believe that is possible. For a WEC race that can be from six to 24 hours, that is very difficult.

We keep saying that F1 needs to change and that the powers to be need to listen to the viewers and spectators. After all, they are the people who are paying for it, but I'm sorry to say the people who can do something about making F1 better never listen to anyone.

If we don't see a change in this, and soon, then viewing numbers will keep diminishing and the money available from sponsors will reduce. So we could actually see F1 become a victim of its own stupidity.

When you worked as a technical director, did you always focus only on the good of your team or did you care about the fans as much as you do now?
Michael Brown, via email

When I was a technical director, I was employed by a team to build as fast a car as possible within a budget and a set of regulations. I think I always put, or tried to put, aesthetics high on my list of priorities.

I always worked on the fact that if the car looked decent the mechanics would be proud of it and when giving it that extra coat of polish they might just spot something that could go wrong. If it wasn't decent looking they would be putting the cover over it as quickly as possible and getting back to the hotel.

I don't believe it is the responsibility of the technical directors to satisfy the fans; it is the responsibility of the FIA and FOM to come up with a set of technical and sporting regulations that will satisfy the fans, after all they are F1's customers.

Why do the sponsors spend their money advertising on these cars and around the circuits? If it was any other product, from a washing machine to a lawnmower and it didn't satisfy the customer, it would be off the market and a new one introduced. If this didn't happen then the company that manufactured it would be out of business.

The problem is that the governing bodies and the teams believe that F1 is their toy and their toy to do with as they think fit. I am afraid none of them has listened to any of the fan surveys that have been carried out over the past few years.

Long gone are the fans' heroes - the Jim Clarks, the Jackie Stewarts, the Emerson Fittipaldis and the Ronnie Petersons - to name but a few.

I don't know if this will ever change, but for F1 to get back to where it was when the driver was the hero needs a lot of the technical trickery removed from the cars.