Mission Accomplished

In the end it all looked so straightforward, as Fernando Alonso did far more than he needed to do by securing second place in Interlagos. The result gave him an unexpectedly healthy margin of 13 points over Michael Schumacher, who could have only won the title on equal points with a tie-break of wins settling things in his favour. It was a little bit closer in the constructors' championship, but a five-point margin was still more than enough to see Renault secure their second consecutive title.

Of course, it wasn't quite that straightforward up on the French team's pit wall. Everything was fine as long as Alonso was still running, but in the closing laps there was still a chance that if the Spaniard retired, Schumacher could jump Jenson Button for second, and Felipe Massa would slow down, and the tables would turn. It didn't happen, of course.

Despite the result, this was not an entirely straightforward weekend for the team. Before practice began on Friday, Alonso was given the engine from the T-car. It was to the same spec as the one originally earmarked for him, but it was newly built. The original engine had been in the T-car in Japan, and contained a part that came from the same batch as one that had given cause for concern in a dyno test back in Europe on Thursday. Rather than risk another problem, the team went for the newer engine.

That created some sort of comfort zone, but after that expensive Monza failure, everyone was aware that anything could still happen.

Then there was the tyre issue. Production schedules and the like meant that Renault finalised their Interlagos tyre choice even before Japan, whereas Ferrari had some extra time. In fact, Renault had three final possibilities, from which two were chosen on Wednesday evening after weather forecasts had been studied. The team expected the cool weather to stay on for the weekend and went for tyres that operated in a lower temperature window. Unfortunately for Renault, it warmed up on Saturday and was hotter again on race-day.

That was far from ideal, although in general it's better to have cool weather tyres and hot conditions than the other way round (as happened in Hungary), so it was at least a manageable situation.

Michelin tyre © LAT

"We've been watching the weather very closely for the past fortnight or ten days," Michelin's F1 director Nick Shorrock told autosport.com after the race. "And clearly when we made the final choice of products on Wednesday evening we thought it was going to be a lot cooler than it was. This season, the need for precision is a lot more than last year, so probably the temperature windows are about the same width as last year, but if we've not been in them, it's been a lot more difficult than it was last year.

"The product didn't react badly, but for sure our competitors were extremely fast, and all credit to them, they put up a fantastic show. The overall tyre performance was acceptable. It responded as we expected it to respond. Let's not forget that you can have a tyre performance, but you need to have a car performance and a driver performance, and the performances of Fernando and Giancarlo [Fisichella] today were exceptional."

So there were certainly extra stress factors, but the problems faced by Michael Schumacher were even greater, and everything fell Renault's way. In the end, it was down to good preparation, and nothing was left to chance. There were extra sacrifices for some, especially director of engineering Pat Symonds. Just a few days before the race, his daughter gave birth to Pat's first grandchild in her adopted home country of Spain, but so focused was Symonds on the job at hand that he postponed his first trip to see the young lad until after Brazil. That's dedication...

After the chequered flag fell at Interlagos, autosport.com talked to two of the key insiders - Alonso's race engineer Rod Nelson, and Renault's head of engine operations Denis Chevrier - about how the weekend unfolded.

Nelson: England (and France) expected

During his time at Renault, the man arguably closest to Fernando Alonso has been his race engineer, Rod Nelson. The former Arrows and Simtek employee joined Benetton in 1997 and has been a key team member ever since. Engineer and driver spend a lot of time together, and it's crucial that they understand each other - and not just when communicating over the radio. It becomes a very close relationship as the years go by.

"I'm very, very happy," Nelson smiled as celebrations kicked off just after the flag. "We had a few things going on, but what the hell, we can forget about it now."

Nelson admitted that the tyre issue was a major concern as the weekend progressed.

"In a word, yes! But we were fine. I expected Fernando to be complaining about the car, but looking at the telemetry it didn't look too bad. He was actually quite happy. We juggled the tyre pressures about a little bit, but it was nothing too hideous. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be."

The engine problem too was always in the background, although there was little Nelson could do other than cross his fingers - and make sure that Alonso took as little out of it as possible.

Rod Nelson and Fernando Alonso © LAT

"To be honest, there have been so many things I've been worried about this weekend, I've been trying to forget them all. Since we changed it on Friday, I've put it at the back of my mind.

"Fisi had the latest E-spec engine; we ran a D5, and the only reason we did that was because we needed to be sure of getting at least one championship, we needed to get at least one championship.

"In retrospect, today, we could have been a bit braver, but we really didn't need to with Fernando. In fact, if you look at the sector times in the race, in Sector 2 where engines are really insensitive, he was absolutely staggeringly quick - very, very quick."

In the build-up to the race, there was a lot of talk about how Ferrari and Renault would have one-race engines and would be able to run higher revs for longer. In the end, Alonso didn't need to take the risk.

"No, we didn't use any of our high rev laps! Our high rev laps are 'Revs 7', and he did 75% of the race in 'Revs 2'. Almost as low as it could possibly be."

Although Schumacher kept the pressure on, Nelson says he was never too worried.

"We were pretty sure that we were going to end up ahead of Michael. He was going to come out four or five seconds behind us at the second stops, and there was no way he was going to get past Fernando.

"But he drove like a world champion, let's face it. He kept it lit and was completely determined. It was a fantastic race for him."

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that this year's performance was not compromised by the need to keep on pushing with development of last year's car while the 2005 title battle was on. One could argue that McLaren lost out in 2006 because of last year's intensive campaign, while conversely Ferrari gained because development on the 2005 car tailed off early as there was nothing to fight for. It's always a delicate balance, and Renault got it right.

Rod agrees: "Between August and December last year was probably a bit of a struggle for the guys back in the design office, because we were pushing like hell on the R25 but also trying to get the R26 on stream as soon as possible. But if you look at the first six races of the year, we won five of them, so the boys at the factory did an absolutely fantastic job."

There's no question that two titles, achieved with different engine designs, is an impressive achievement.

"It's actually four in a row!" he joked, counting the constructors' as well. "It just shows it's not luck. It's a fantastic team, a brilliant car. OK, maybe the Bridgestones had the legs on us over the last four or five races, but it's 18 over a season, let's not forget."

It wasn't always easy, and Nelson was adamant about when things started to become a little stressful.

Fernando Alonso (Renault R26) on the Indianapolis banking © LAT

"The hardest time for me and Fernando was probably Indy onwards, just because you are on such a high, and you get used to winning. We'd won four races on the trot, and then didn't win Indy. He was beaten by his teammate, in all fairness. It was time to get gritty about it, and think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Fernando was upset about it, but he gritted his teeth and got on with it."

But as far as Alonso and Nelson are concerned, from now on they'll just be good friends rather than a tightly-knit team.

"Of course I'm going to miss him. He's my link with Spain, and I've got a Spanish girlfriend. But life goes on."

The natural assumption is that Nelson will work with the incoming Heikki Kovalainen next year, but he may yet switch to Giancarlo Fisichella.

"That's TBA. In all honestly, Fisi is the guy that is staying with this team. Look at his race today, he drove a blinder. We'll have a see; it's still to be decided."

The French connection

It's all too easy to focus on the British side of the Renault team and forget that there's a sizeable group at Viry outside Paris providing the superb power plant for the R26. The man who heads engine operations at the track is Denis Chevrier, who has experienced success with Williams as well the pukka Renault team.

His weekend didn't get off to a great start when he stumbled over a step on the slope that runs from the paddock to the car park, leaving him with an injured left arm strapped up. Fortunately that didn't put a stop to any celebratory champagne supping after the race.

"Of course I'm very pleased," he said. "Because after Suzuka, we had everything in hand to get success. So that put on us a pressure which was absolutely huge. If we failed to be world champions after being in front of the field for the complete season, it would have been such a bad thing. With one of the very top drivers of the world championship, not being able to get him world champion would have been a big disappointment.

"And in terms of the constructors' title, after having very often produced some very close performances between our two drivers - we really had the technical approach of always giving the maximum of what we were able to do to both our drivers - if we had failed to win the championship, it would as well have been a bad thing."

Like Nelson, Chevrier recognised the added value of winning back-to-back titles.

"It's very good to win twice, and to win twice against two different competitors. That shows how difficult it is, and how big the challenge of the competition is. If we had beaten the same competitor, it wouldn't have meant the same. We battled against Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, unbeatable for years. That's a strong feeling."

Renault's head of engine operations, Denis Chevrier © LAT

Chevrier was at the heart of the decision to go for the engine swap before practice. However, he was at pains to play down the significance of the move, saying it was a case of leaving nothing to chance in the quest for reliability.

"We really have to make it clear. It was in terms of ultimate precautions that we did that. I should say in any other meeting we would not have done this change. In the approach to this last Grand Prix, we said we needed to make every effort to not have the opportunity - if we failed - to say we failed because at this point, we have not been good. So we made every inspection, every check, to have the conclusion that in terms of pure reliability and everything we were 3% more confident with this engine rather than that one.

"It was not a serious problem. There were some signs of something, but it was used significantly harder in terms of life than what we had to do here. When you look it's something where you say not 100% normal. We'll ask a lot less of it in the meeting, but if we have a choice, we'll use the other one. It was the same spec, but a different batch. And that's it."

He confirmed that Alonso had been as gentle as possible on the engine come the race, and didn't stray into high revs territory.

"He told us at the beginning of the race he would not, and he didn't. It worked very well, not asking for maximum, which would have been ridiculous. Normally, we say at the beginning of the race we'll use these revs, and when there's a strategy in terms of management of the engine, we ask to go down. Very often, he goes down by himself, and that's what happened here. We knew he'd be like that.

"When we had in accordance with the pitstops of other competitors we had to recover a proper pace, he was informed to go a bit more, when knowing about the gaps to the other ones, to produce a reasonable effort. To stay in front of Jenson, for instance."

Including his Williams years, Chevrier has worked with a lot of great drivers, but he certainly has a soft spot for Fernando.

"For sure we'll miss him, because he's so talented. Mainly in terms of the human point of view, he really feels something very strong with the team, with the people who have the fortune to be close to him, it was very good. When you see how he was on the podium, it's the spirit of a great person, able to show the others that they are integrated in the global effort and so on."

Inevitably, last weekend much of the focus was on Michael Schumacher's last appearance, but the end of the remarkably successful Alonso/Renault partnership is also a significant landmark. It remains to be seen how the Spaniard gets on in the very different environment at McLaren. But then there were folk who questioned Schumi's decision to quit Benetton 11 years ago after winning two titles...