Coming out in defence of Renault

Last week's ructions surrounding Vitaly Petrov were interesting. Mid-week, a load of negative comment about Lotus Renault GP was all over the internet, much of it attributed to the Russian.

It appeared that frustration had been welling up inside the 27-year-old and he had finally snapped.

"I haven't criticised the team despite what we have lost so many times," Petrov said. "How much have we missed at pitstops? With strategy? We have lost positions in about 10 races or even more. Even without a fast car we could have gained good points if we had had a good strategy."

Petrov alluded to his contract precluding him from bad-mouthing the team, which is standard fare in most driver/team agreements. Earlier in the season, however, his manager had been quoted implying that it was not a courtesy that was always applied in the opposite direction.

"I couldn't say in interviews that we lost it with the pitstops, and I cannot talk about that now either," Petrov went on, "but I can't keep silent any more - it is over. I can't keep everything inside any more."

Petrov had, of course, started the season with a podium in Melbourne. He puts the current struggles down to Renault's failure to keep pace in the development race.

The unique nature of Renault's exhaust lay-out made it a tricky proposition in Abu Dhabi © LAT

"When the windtunnel developments came," he explained, "the new parts, because of the front exhausts, didn't work. We worked on the front wing, rear wing, diffuser, floor - but whatever we changed, it was useless."

As much as anything, it was the timing of the outburst that was interesting. In the paddock, Petrov was being seen as a certainty for one 2012 Lotus Renault cockpit - with a contract already in place - while doubt surrounded the remaining seat. Bruno Senna, Romain Grosjean, Adrian Sutil or even Kimi Raikkonen were mentioned in connection with that.

Renault lost its star performer the moment Robert Kubica crashed his rally car and while Petrov's nickname, 'The Vyborg Rocket', might be stretching things a tad, he's competent enough to warrant his place.

Shortly after he signed for 2010, someone said, "I don't know about 'Vitaly Petrov', I suspect 'Vitally Fifteen Million Bucks' is probably more like it..."

Petrov though, like Pastor Maldonado, is more than a pay driver. If you and your backers have access to millions and you can front up a GP2 title too, then you're pretty much a shoo-in. Maldonado offered precisely that and Williams took him in preference to retaining Nico Hulkenberg. Petrov didn't quite win the GP2 title but was runner-up to Hulkenberg in '09, which was good enough.

You started to wonder whether Renault had someone in the wings with almost as big a wedge, who may even be a mite quicker and that perhaps the team was looking for a way out of the Petrov deal. Perhaps there was an option on the team's side and this was Petrov trying to make it crystal clear that any 2011 shortcomings should not be laid at his door.

Maybe, but it appears not. It transpires that instead of a premeditated midweek action on the part of Petrov, it was rather a frustrated reaction to the events of Abu Dhabi uttered immediately post-race to Russian TV, which had merely taken a while to appear in translation.

Vitaly Petrov's results have gradually degraded as the season has progressed © sutton-images.com

The Renault R31 was never going to be the steed of choice around Yas Marina for reasons I'll go into in a moment, but Petrov's race had been frustrating.

He'd lost his DRS early on and the team had switched him to a one-stopper. It hadn't worked and he'd had to pit again, adding up to a 13th place finish behind both Force Indias, both Saubers and Rubens Barrichello's Williams.

After his outbust, Petrov and his management thought better of it. "Let's just say that I acted a bit stupidly," he said at the end of last week. "I was very disappointed, very tired, I had to answer a lot of questions and somehow I didn't handle it correctly. But I had a chat with the team and everything is now OK."

Team principal Eric Boullier's take was this: "The interview was made minutes after Vitaly jumped out of the car. The race was tough, he was upset not to have scored points, he was exhausted.

"Drivers are not robots, they're human beings. Also, like every driver, Vitaly is a competitor. We take this incident as exactly that - an incident. Vitaly has apologised to the team and sent an email to all the staff at Enstone. As far as we're concerned, the matter is closed."

So much for the toy throwing. As ever with a sport as constantly evolving and fascinating as F1, the actual explanations behind Petrov's frustrations are more interesting still. There are sound reasons why the year began with podiums and then went steadily downhill. And they're not rooted in pitstops or strategy.

Renault's technical director James Allison says that, with hindsight, the front-exhaust configuration is not a path he'd have trodden. At the time though, it was a good solution to a problem that no longer exists.

"When we ran a blown exhaust in 2010," he explained, "it gave us downforce, and plenty of it, but with a rather unpleasant handling effect on our car with the Bridgestone tyres. Every time you put your foot down and got the downforce, it was all at the rear and you had a heap of understeer.

"One of the hypothetical benefits of a front exhaust was that you generate most of the effect from the middle of the car and don't get that nasty understeer.

"But, wind on to the start of the year and we found out that the Pirellis actually had a very different characteristic to the Bridgestones. They suffer more under combined load and so, as you come out of a corner, when you want traction, the rear becomes unhappy quite quickly. What you really want is a load more rear downforce..."

In other words, precisely what they'd had before.

Allison goes on: "We basically had a car that was fairly snappy and difficult all year in those combined conditions. And a car that was ugly as hell at all the circuits where those conditions predominate - Monaco, Hungary, Singapore." And, no doubt, Abu Dhabi.

When you look at the stats of the season, you can understand why Russian TV might have been asking questions.

Renault made a promising start with consecutive podiums in Australia and Malaysia and scored 66 points up to and including the German GP at the hallway stage. In the eight races since, it has added just six further points from ninth places in Spa, Monza and Suzuka.

The team experimented with reversion to a rear-blown exhaust in Germany but did not persevere with it, finding too many compromises.

"At the point we did that in Germany," Allison points out, "we hadn't started talking about changing the rules (with the prescribed exhaust exits) for 2012. It was abundantly clear we were getting well beaten by Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari and a whole bunch of mid-grid teams were nudging in front of us having started well behind. It was pretty clear we needed to re-evaluate.

Renault boss Eric Boullier says Petrov's remarks were made in the heat of the moment © LAT

"We made up a configuration closely related to our best one at the point we'd frozen rear-blowing development in September '10 and did a bit more work on it, copied a couple of the trends we'd seen on other cars - cut-outs around the tyre, etc - and ran it at Duxford (aerodrome).

"There was plenty of rear downforce available but because we had to graft it onto our existing diffuser, we were unable to control the performance of the floor at lower rear ride heights. In the higher speed corners the diffuser was unstable and stalled.

"Then it became clear that this configuration was not going to be available next year anyway and did not justify re-inventing the wheel. We just had to take it on the chin."

In short, Renault took a bold approach to 2011 and for one reason or another, most of which were outside its control, it went pear-shaped.

The importance of exhaust-blowing in 2011 is shown by the number of teams that started behind Renault but went past once they better understood the rear-blowing techniques. It did not help either, that Renault was in the vanguard of off-throttle blowing while other teams cottoned on later and caught up.

Controlling the heat of Renault's front exhaust in the sidepod area was also problematic and solutions cost downforce. The configurations also carried a weight penalty, something of a double whammy.

What Petrov said about the team's development was correct, but not for any want of trying on Renault's part. The full story is rather more complex than can be portrayed by a sound byte for a medium that can be as superficial as television.

On such foundations are misunderstandings built. But if Vitaly's wallet is big enough, I'm sure he'll be forgiven.