Why Renault should learn from McLaren's revival

Contrary to the heavy criticism it is getting, I think Renault is doing a good job in Formula 1.

The unfortunate thing is that it is in what we like to call 'Class B', and as the third full works team on the grid alongside Mercedes and Ferrari, the expectations from its upper management are sky-high.

The Renault board agrees to the massive spend that it takes for an F1 team to compete and at least be nipping at the heels of the big teams, but instead Renault is getting blown away by customer team McLaren and is only just hanging on ahead of Toro Rosso and Racing Point.

To put this into context, and show why I call what Renault is competing in a 'Class B' championship, look at the average performance of the big three teams - Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull - and the points scored (below). This shows the average performance of the cars this year based on an average of each team's fastest single lap of a weekend expressed as a percentage of the fastest. There is also a column showing the percentage of the maximum possible points scored had a team finished first and second and got fastest lap every race.

To show how big the gap from the top of the leaderboard to the leader of the 'Class B' championship is, McLaren is +1.464% off and has scored just 14% of the theoretical points maximum.

Now to look at 'Class B' itself. The top three teams have two cars each, so being best of the rest means finishing seventh is all you can expect from a given race. So, the best possible two-car finish with fastest lap would give you 11 points if all of the top six finish ahead.

Here are the seven teams listed in performance order, on the same basis as above. If you have a faster car, you should outperform a rival in a race but as this shows, that doesn't always happen.

This all shows the clear divide between the haves and the have-nots. Unfortunately for Renault, it should be classified as one of those that have. A company of its standing cannot continue unless it ups its performance both in pure speed and in maximising its points-scoring potential.

For 2019, Renault had big exceptions and made a lot of promises to its supporters. My biggest worry is that the same promises were made to the people sitting at the big desks, who write the cheques to keep the team going. Lack of performance relative to those promises, combined with the team's disqualification from the Japanese Grand Prix for its brake-bias system - plus the fact McLaren is jumping ship and switching to Mercedes engines in 2021 - means the bean counters will have their abacuses out to see if this makes commercial sense.

By signing up Daniel Ricciardo for 2019, Renault made a big statement as it spent big to tempt him away from Red Bull. Yes, he is a proven race winner but for the team to achieve that itself in the first place it needs the tools - so that money would have been far better spent on car development.

If Renault had done that and got behind Nico Hulkenberg, I'm pretty sure he would have brought home some big points. He is a very talented driver, but by going about its dealings in the way it has all Renault has done is given one of its best assets a kick in the goolies.

Renault has McLaren as a fantastic reference and can't have its head in the sand going its own way and not reacting to what is happening in front of it

Will bringing in Esteban Ocon - who is, not insignificantly, French - for 2020 patch up what is missing in Renault's performance? I don't think so and if it was down to me I would've stuck with Hulkenberg. After all, he is at home with the way Renault works and understands its capabilities.

From day one of next year's testing he would have understood what sort of a step the team had made. But the way it has gone this year I think that is the last thing the team would want to hear because it might just go against some of the promises made.

This is why Renault must take a very close look at how McLaren has turned things around after four poor seasons - three of them with Honda when all the team ever did was blame its power unit partner. By biting the bullet and using the Renault engine, not the best in the pitlane but a good reference as Red Bull was still using it, it gave McLaren a very accurate measure of where it stood chassis-wise.

McLaren did just that, made a lot of internal changes and has now taken firm control of the battle for best of the rest at the top of 'Class B'. In effect, McLaren is now the reference for Renault that Red Bull once was for McLaren.

Renault doesn't seem to have gone through this process while expanding rapidly. It has McLaren as a fantastic reference and needs to not have its head in the sand going its own way and not reacting to what is happening in front of it.

Going back to the brake-bias adjustment system that got Renault disqualified at Suzuka, I must admit I do agree with team boss Cyril Abiteboul - that the rules as written are outdated. They have been added to far too many times over the last two decades (but unfortunately during that period nothing has been taken away).

The sporting regulation stating 'a driver shall drive the car alone and unaided' is typical of how the rules in some areas really lag a long way behind what is currently used by all of the teams.

Power steering, paddle clutches, automatic clutch bite point and paddle gear-change systems to name but a few all take away from a driver's effort levels. Yes, the driver still has to instigate their requests and still steer the car but as Daniel Ricciardo said, none of the current drivers could steer these cars if they didn't have the assistance of the power steering.

He also said that the driver could chose the level of assistance they wanted, so again it is another driver aid available to them. Anything that means the driver doesn't have to think so much about what they need to do is a 'driver aid'. I'm not saying it is wrong to use modern technology, it is just very difficult for anyone to understand the choices of what is allowed or in this case not allowed. It's a bit random.

Given Romain Grosjean said the team has been using it since 2015, when it was still Lotus, this means it has put a lot of effort into it. To have been using this system for four years without the FIA taking an interest in it makes me worry about the systems other teams might be using to aid the driver that the FIA hasn't been informed of. What Abiteboul said about the actual regulations could also be seen as implying that F1 has outgrown its own governing body.

Renault does need to show it can join the big boys and needs to do so very soon. It's far too late for it to do it in 2019, I just hope it gets a chance to show it for '20.

Remember, when the penny pinchers in these global companies make a decision - as was made with Toyota and Honda not long ago - they don't really care too much about agreements that are already in place. They will send around a memo saying 'pack your bags, we're out of here'.

Nobody wants to see that happen, and perhaps by taking a few lessons from McLaren that can be avoided.

McLaren, of course, did have a difficult race in Mexico after fading on the hard tyres following a great start. But overall, the race was as good as we have seen this year. There was some argy bargy at the beginning and battles throughout the field that were hard, mostly fair, and very intense. The varying strategies at the front also kept it interesting.

Sometimes I struggle to understand strategy decisions. Ferrari basically threw away any chance of winning the race as early on as lap 14 when Leclerc pitted from the lead. He had started the race on the medium tyres and this early in the race fitted a second set of the same compound.

It's interesting to see that Ross Brawn has said that the teams are the ones that stood in the way of the three reversed-grid qualifying races. I can only sit back and laugh

In doing that he announced to the pitlane and everyone watching that he was on a two-stop strategy. Why do that and allow the others to review their planned strategies? If he had fitted the hard tyre, which Daniel Ricciardo was using from the start of the race and making good use of, he would at least have had the option to change to a one-stop or wouldn't have revealed his afternoon's plan so early. And maybe the hards would have taken him far enough for a short final stint on softs.

Albon also committed to a two-stop but in the end, for Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel - who I think pitted five/eight laps too late - and Valtteri Bottas, a one-stop strategy was good enough to lock out the podium. This strategic variation made for an interesting race.

But, and it's a big but, when any car gets within two seconds of another car it just can't really get any closer. The front-running cars suffer that bit more because they are more aerodynamically refined, so they need to have a huge lap time advantage to attempt any sort of overtaking manoeuvre. If optimised to give the best lap time performance, they start to overheat almost immediately.

This is what F1 is trying to rectify for 2021, but I'm not holding my breath that it will work, mainly because the teams have too much say in what goes on. I suppose it's just like the old saying 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?'. In my opinion, the FIA and F1 just have to say, 'These are the regulations, if you don't want to race under these you don't have too'.

The current teams are in F1 because it suits their worldwide marketing. They either want to be part of that or not, and if they don't then fine - go and do Formula E.

I was on a flight once with Bernie Ecclestone and Eddie Jordan and they were in heavy discussion about something or other. I remember Bernie saying to Eddie, 'Jordan, the problem with you is you know everything that is wrong but nothing about how to put it right'. How true that statement is of what is currently happening with the introduction of new regulations and potential weekend format changes.

That was a race to our current regulations and good or bad I'm pretty sure it is what we will be having for the foreseeable future. There don't seem to be many positive stories coming out of the planned 2021 overhaul and with Ferrari and its power of veto over any changes it doesn't feel is correct, I just can't see it agreeing to change.

All Ferrari wants to do is concentrate on what it currently has and challenge Mercedes. Change will only confuse its development direction and while Ferrari might get it right and its main opposition wrong, seeing as Mercedes has dominated through rule changes, the chances of that seem pretty small.

It's interesting to see that Ross Brawn has said that the teams are the ones that stood in the way of the three reversed-grid qualifying races. I can only sit back and laugh as in all my time of going to technical working group meetings, post the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, Ross was the main protagonist against change.

Over those years he was top dog at Benetton and Ferrari, both top teams, so getting agreement for change was always down to Bernie and Max muscling things through. Perhaps now he realises how frustrating it was for the rest of us who were involved with small teams!

Later this month Gary Anderson will be answering your questions again in our latest Ask Gary feature. Send your questions to askgary@autosport.com, use #askgaryF1 on Twitter or look out for our posts on Facebook and Instagram giving you the chance to have your question answered