The radical transformation that pre-dated Renault’s F1 triumph

When Renault returned to Formula 1 as a fully fledged factory team in 2016, it boldly announced its aspirations of becoming a winning force again within five years. There’s nothing wrong with showing ambition, but its hopelessly misguided comments made a rod for the team’s back and revealed an ignorance of the work involved in lifting the Enstone operation up the grid after years of underinvestment by previous owner Genii Capital.

Now in its latest identity as Alpine, the team remains firmly ensconced in the midfield fight and, despite qualifying heroics from Esteban Ocon in Portugal and Spain, appears unlikely to finish higher than fifth once again. In the final year of the current regulations, it would be prudent to start looking at its design for 2022 in the not-too-distant future.

But before writing off the A521 altogether, Renault CEO Luca de Meo and co should take inspiration from another former ‘Team Enstone’ guise, Benetton, whose transformation from backmarker to on-merit podium finisher in 2001 is one of the more remarkable of modern times.

Of course, it’s easier to find gains when the only way is up. Studying the supertimes, based on an average of each team’s ultimate pace at each grand prix, Benetton was the ninth-quickest team of 2001. It was slower even than Prost, which went bust at season’s end, and 2.915% off the pace of frontrunner Ferrari.

But it’s not every F1 team that is able to go from paddock laughing stock – then-technical director Mike Gascoyne refers to the Renault-powered B201 as a “dog” – to cracking the top 10 in qualifying with both cars by the end of the season.

The Benettons of Button and Fisichella, with Mild Seven on their rear wings, have a mountain to climb at Imola

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Three podiums from Giancarlo Fisichella – including a second place in Brazil after David Coulthard’s McLaren was disqualified – had helped the team to finish fourth in the constructors’ standings in 2000, pipping BAR on countback. It represented a return to form for the team after a terrible 1999 campaign in which it had slipped to sixth in the constructors’ points – its worst performance since 1986 (during which it still won a race) – due to a poor correlation with the windtunnel that resulted in key aero deficiencies and supposed innovations proving dead ends (Benetton’s Front Torque Transfer system and twin-clutch gearbox were the chief culprits).

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Renault had completed a deal with the Benetton family to buy the team in March 2000, and the return of Flavio Briatore as managing director coincided with an influx of investment that brought ex-Jordan technical director Gascoyne into the fold, with Jordan chief designer Mark Smith and deputy technical director Bob Bell following in 2001.

"Having a good windtunnel doesn’t always mean that you put quick racing cars in it. You’ve still got to design a quick car, and they weren’t doing so" Mike Gascoyne

“One thing about Flavio, he was very supportive of building up a team to win a world championship,” says Gascoyne, “so people I wanted he was very supportive of getting.”

For Pat Symonds, who had taken over as technical director in 1996 following Ross Brawn's departure to Ferrari and steered the team through a few lean years, a bright future appeared around the corner.

“In the late 1990s, I was technical director and I had a lot on my plate,” he recalls. “We had a tiny budget and an incredibly onerous engine supply contract with Mecachrome which was killing us.

“People talk about engine costs these days, but believe me they were a lot worse then as a percentage of your total budget. It bears no resemblance. We were already bleeding paying those engine bills, and then at the end of the year we’d get another bill because we’ve used more engines in testing than the contract said, so we were really struggling in that respect.

“Number one on my job list every single day was to prepare the team for sale, effectively. I knew we were moving into an era where you had to be aligned with a manufacturer, so I had to make the team attractive to a manufacturer by appearing to be a big team running on a small team budget. That was really tough, but we achieved the objective and Renault had faith that it was a good thing to get into.

Pat Symonds could see light at the tunnel by 2001 as Benetton transitioned into Renault

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“Suddenly there was a lot more money coming in, so the team was able to grow up very rapidly. Our 2000-01 budget compared to our 1998-99 budget was beyond belief and, of course, by 2001 we weren’t really paying for engines either.”

But there was still plenty of work to do, not least debugging the windtunnel and improving the model quality, before the team could begin to have designs on recapturing its glory days of 1994-95.

“When I went to Jordan, they were failing because of their aerodynamic programme, and when I went to Benetton it was exactly the same,” says Gascoyne. “They had a much better windtunnel, much bigger facilities, loads more people, but having a good windtunnel doesn’t always mean that you put quick racing cars in it. You’ve still got to design a quick car, and they weren’t doing so.”

And while alignment with a manufacturer had its obvious benefits, the wide-angle 111-degree RS21 engine in the back of the B201 was late and not up to the job when it arrived. Its cause was not helped by the revelation during the British Grand Prix weekend that Renault had been a victim of industrial espionage, leaving the manufacturer convinced that former members of East German secret police had been paid to access information on the design on behalf of an undisclosed rival competitor. Several key elements were subsequently changed to ensure rivals didn’t have access to contemporary developments.

Gascoyne spent pre-season testing and the early rounds playing down expectations, and for good reason. Around 150bhp down on rival units in the early races, the engine was also frequently unreliable, which hampered efforts to improve the set-up during practice. Symonds pulls no punches when reflecting on Renault’s return as an engine supplier for the first time since 1997.

“That was a dreadful engine, it had no torque,” he says. “We understood it a lot later, but the separation of the two banks meant that the trumpets didn’t feed each other, and therefore an awful lot of the mid-range torque that you have on the narrow vee engine just wasn’t there, and it took forever to understand that.

“We had problems with reliability, problems with the cam-drives, they had magnesium cylinder heads that used to erode rapidly, all sorts of problems with it. I think the fact that it was late wasn’t so much of a problem as the fact that it simply wasn’t a good engine.”

Finishing three laps down in Australia was a sign of things to come for Fisichella

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Exhaust issues meant both cars were off the pace in the Melbourne opener, where Fisichella’s was the last car still running, three laps down. The Italian scaled the giddy heights of sixth place at a rain-hit Interlagos thanks to a late pass on Jean Alesi’s Prost, but for three races in a row traversing Imola, Barcelona and the A1-Ring, team-mate Jenson Button could muster no better than 21st on the grid, ahead of only Tarso Marques in the Minardi. Fisichella fared little better by taking 19th on each occasion.

Aside from a crippling lack of power, the car lacked downforce because it had been designed late to accommodate the engine. In the Spanish GP, both cars were soundly beaten by Benetton test driver Fernando Alonso in the Minardi, the Spaniard’s fastest race lap almost 0.9 seconds quicker than either of the blue machines.

“I inherited the 2001 car, which was a complete dog and obviously the engine didn’t help,” reflects Gascoyne. “The trouble is when you start working on the windtunnel, it takes several months to make new models, and put in new processes, and even then when you’ve got everything ready to go, you’ve still got to design a quick car and test all the bits. So that took until mid-season.”

Although Fisichella was an improved 10th on the grid in Monaco before crashing out, the mood in the camp was bleak. Button – a highly rated prospect after his rookie season with Williams in 2000 – was reportedly offered the chance to walk away on full pay to create a vacancy for Briatore protege Alonso, but turned it down, while rumours circled that Gascoyne was to hand in his notice. That, of course, was nonsense.

"When the Renault money did come along, we knew how to spend it, and I think that was an ethos that went all the way through. We were a very cost-effective team and that stood us in good stead in the early 2000s" Pat Symonds

Speaking in 2001, Gascoyne reflected: “The most difficult thing was to try to motivate people, which was hard when we were having bad results. But there are no instant fixes in this business, you just have to put in the work and be aware that you are not going to be able to solve all your problems tomorrow. It was a case of standing up and taking the flak, but I never lost sight of where we were going. It was a difficult time, especially when some people were writing that I was out of here.”

But there was light at the end of the tunnel – testing of a new aerodynamic package planned for the Hungarian GP suggested it offered 1-1.5s of performance. After a morale-boosting fourth and fifth for Fisichella and Button at Hockenheim (the Italian was just 1s behind Jacques Villeneuve’s third-placed BAR on a day when poor reliability decimated the field), the struggles of the Michelin tyres hampered the debut of the new package at the Hungaroring.

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But Spa was a different story entirely. Although Fisichella felt he underperformed in qualifying to start eighth for the Belgian GP, he more than made up for it in the race. He got a cracking launch from the race’s second start, following red flags caused by Luciano Burti’s Prost shunting into the tyres, and leapt up to second behind Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari at the first corner. Despite his power deficit, Fisichella managed to keep Coulthard’s McLaren at bay for much of the race before succumbing late on at Eau Rouge. Third, though, was still a highly creditable result.

Points at last came at Hockenheim for both cars

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More engine unreliability masked the blue cars’ pace at Monza, where Button charged into Jarno Trulli’s Jordan at the first corner, and tyre blistering rendered another improved performance at Indianapolis pointless (when points were only handed out to the top six). But for the season finale at Suzuka, both cars made the top 10 on the grid for the first time and, after qualifying a season-best sixth, Fisichella ran ahead of Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren until a third-lap spin. He lost fourth gear while running seventh late on, promoting Button to the position.

How does Symonds look back on the tumultuous 2001?

“I think it was a good year, I certainly enjoyed it,” he says. “Our whole R&D effort was better, we had a couple of really good designers in Tim [Densham, who had joined in 1999 from the abandoned Honda project] and Mark – transformational I’d say – and the windtunnel was starting to work well. It was all coming together.

“It probably gave us the right sort of attitude so that when the Renault money did come along, we knew how to spend it, and I think that was an ethos that went all the way through. We were a very cost-effective team and that stood us in good stead in the early 2000s as we built up to that 2005 championship.”

Fisichella joins Coulthard and race winner Schumacher on the podium at Spa

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