Renault's Hungarian Reprieve

Fernando Alonso and Renault were at the heart of the extraordinary Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. The reigning world champion earned his now infamous qualifying penalty on Friday, and on Sunday he appeared to have turned disaster into triumph when he surged into the lead, both passing Michael Schumacher for position and lapping him in the same event.

It all went wrong when a stray wheel nut saw him catapulted into retirement just as Michael Schumacher began to look like a threat for serious points. The emotional rollercoaster then took another upward surge when the German retired, allowing Alonso to leave Hungary knowing that things could have been much, much worse.

Would the Spaniard have won the race had he not incurred the pit problem? Jenson Button was closing fast and took the lead when Fernando pitted for dries, but with 19 laps to go there was no way that the Briton could have survived on his already worn intermediates without stopping for dries.

The likelihood is that having been first on to dries, Alonso would have done more than enough to deal with the Jenson threat. But it might have been quite close at the flag, even allowing for an extra stop for the Honda...

One thing the rain did was prevent us from seeing how the dry tyre situation would have played out. Everyone was a little nervous after problems in practice, created by the unseasonably low temperatures, and some real drama was in prospect.

In the face of extraordinary circumstances, Renault's director of engineering Pat Symonds had to ensure the team maintained their collective composure, and make all the right calls. He talked us through one of the most bizarre weekends he has ever had to deal with.

AC: What's your feeling about the qualifying penalties, and the sheer coincidence that Fernando and Michael both made mistakes?

Symonds: "It's nothing more than that, it is coincidence. That's nothing Machiavellian about it, or anything like that. It is an intense time of the championship, and maybe it is showing a little bit.

"I think Fernando is very, very calm, but everyone makes mistakes. I really don't think it's anything more than that. Lots of people would like to read more into it than is really there.

"But the coincidental aspect of it is fascinating. On Friday I thought the chances are that we'll sort of be starting again in Turkey on a relatively even footing, but then there was everything still to play for."

AC: You're obviously loath to criticise your driver, but it's very hard to defend him on the incident with Robert Doornbos...

Symonds: "Yeah, I won't criticise my driver in public. But we all do things at times that we are not happy about afterwards."

AC: It was a bit like road rage...

Symonds: "Yeah, in a way! It's just not a particularly big deal. I wish he hadn't done it, and I'm sure he wishes he hadn't done it, but people act on the spur of the moment. It just happens."

AC: So you've got no problem with the fact that he was punished?

Symonds: "Absolutely not, and neither has he. We have to instill standards in F1, in every aspect of F1, and Fernando absolutely wouldn't criticise the punishment he got."

AC: To us, he kept saying it's a normal thing that happens every Friday, in every test session, and it was just two drivers having a discussion. It was a bit like Michael in Monaco - he couldn't bring himself to say 'I shouldn't have done it'...

Symonds: "It's hard to be judged in public, isn't it? I'm sure in his heart he wishes he hadn't done it."

AC: The yellow flag incident was strange, in that the flag had been out, had been withdrawn, and then came out again after the end of the session when the marshals went back on to the track to deal with the parked car. But flags are always a black and white issue...

Symonds: "It is a black and white issue. It's a totally different thing. Whereas the Doornbos incident is one of those things that I am sure Fernando will regret, the yellow flag was a simple mistake. Drivers should be looking for yellow flags.

"The circumstances were that the yellow flag was out. It was then taken in and Fernando thought the track was clear, but it then came out again. He should have noticed it, but it was nothing more than that."

AC: Do you think the penalty of one plus one seconds was a reasonable solution?

Symonds: "The effect of a penalty like that is different from circuit to circuit. In Hungary, a two-second penalty is much harsher than in Canada or Spa, or somewhere like that. You can get so pedantic about these things, and you could end up doing loads of calculations to try and even it out, but at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with what the stewards did."

AC: Ross Brawn was angry that Michael got the same penalty for a single offence, but the stewards' view is that a red flag is twice as serious as a yellow...

Symonds: "I think I would agree with that. A red flag is an extremely serious thing. It's exactly the same as with Fernando's thing, you can't say 'I thought we'd gone past the incident'. You just never know if there is another one. You can't make assumptions in this game."

AC: How much did the penalty force you to change your approach to qualifying?

Symonds: "The penalty fundamentally changed the way we went about things. It was very obvious that we wouldn't get through to Q3, and it was possible that we wouldn't get through to Q2, to be honest. Therefore it freed up some tyres, and it meant that we changed our Saturday morning programme completely.

"Michael's penalty didn't affect us at all in terms of our programme - we still wanted to get as high up the grid as we could, and get as much information as we could. And even in terms of strategy it didn't alter things particularly."

AC: I guess the biggest difference is normally you just have to scrape through to the top 16, and now he had to be flat out...

Symonds: "Exactly. In fact, out preliminary calculations suggested that the gap between first and 17th would be 2.3 secs, and I think it ended up a little bit more than that in the end. It's not a calculation we'd normally have to make!"

AC: And he did an awesome job, didn't he?

Symonds: "It was superb, absolutely superb. Nothing short of it. I spoke to him in the morning and said, 'Come on, let's put this behind us, let's get on with it.' His response was fantastic, so mature, so focused. I think he wanted to prove a point, but to be honest he wants to prove that every weekend."

AC: Bearing in mind the temperature problems, how did you view the dry tyre situation?

Symonds: "I think the Michelins performed very well relative to the Bridgestones. It appeared to me that Bridgestone had the slightly better first lap, but no way did it have the consistency. Not even close. The longer runs on the Bridgestones didn't look good at all."

AC: [Michelin's F1 director] Nick Shorrock told me that between the six Michelin teams, there was an unprecedented range of 11 different prime and option tyres - out of a possible 12 - in Hungary. Did that make it difficult to share information between the teams, bearing in mind the special problems everyone had?

Symonds: "Not really. While there may be 11 different types of tyre, there'll be two groups, the option group and the prime group, and to be honest they won't be that different.

"For example, if you talk about the compounds of the four Michelin teams that do cooperate on information [it goes without saying that the two Red Bull teams are not part of this club! - AC], three of them did have the same compounds both in prime and option, and one of them had different compounds, but not very different, if you see what I mean.

"If we see something happening on that car that has the slightly different compounds, the chances are that what has happened on it will be pretty applicable to our car. There was a lot more difference in constructions than there was in compounds."

AC: The Michelin runners chose their Hungary tyres Sunday night in Hockenheim. Did you have any inkling at all that the weather was going to be so cold?

Symonds: "No, we didn't. Once we get beyond five-day forecasting, it really is not very accurate. It had been extremely hot in Budapest for a number of weeks. There was a suggestion that it was cooling down last week, and we'd seen that on that Sunday, but to be honest we didn't expect it to last as long as it did."

AC: In the end the race didn't affect the championship battle much. What's your overall feeling about it?

Symonds: "You've got two ways of looking at it. I honestly feel that we lost 18 points. But as far as the championship goes, not much damage in the drivers' or the constructors.'

"After a race like that, we can't be too upset about it. I think Fernando was just absolutely the class of the field in pretty well every condition. He had a fabulous first lap, absolutely incredible, although Michael's first lap was pretty good too. But it seemed like under just about every condition we had it there."

AC: You mentioned the first lap, but Michael had the benefit of extra warm up laps to check out the conditions...

Symonds: "Yes, and he had a much lighter car than Fernando. Fernando hadn't even stopped when the safety car came out, had he?"

AC: Fernando's battle with Michael was quite entertaining. Did you enjoy that?

Symonds: "I did, I enjoyed it a lot!"

AC: There was a strange incident on lap 34, when Fernando suddenly slowed and lost three or four seconds. Some photographers on the scene apparently thought that the engine had died and restarted. What was all that about?

Symonds: "Fernando inadvertently hit the neutral button instead of the oil transfer button, hence the gearbox went to neutral and it took him a bit of time to sort out what had happened."

AC: When he did come in, because of the safety car you had that margin of putting more fuel in without losing anything...

Symonds: "Exactly. We didn't want to go right to the end, because we thought we were going to have to stop for tyres. So what we did was just left the window as wide as we dared, really. So coming up to the last stop we almost had enough fuel to go the end, but not quite! You saw the fuel time, two seconds or something, so it really was a splash and dash.

"Prior to that stop, there was so much discussion going on about when to go to dry tyres. Jenson had stopped, but he had kept his [intermediate] tyres on, and they were obviously working pretty well at that stage."

AC: Were you worried when Michael was catching up at three seconds a lap?

Symonds: "Yes, I was! But I think at all times we had it under control. We had the luxury of very, very wide windows, and we really had the luxury of making our choices without anything forced on us. At no time did we have to stop for fuel."

AC: Scott Speed had shown what happens when you go to dries too early!

Symonds: "Yes, it was a disaster, exactly! And that decision from Toro Rosso wasn't a crazy one. It looked a bit early, but I wouldn't have expected it to be as bad as it was."

AC: The problem is that if you get it just a bit wrong, you go way too slow, you lose temperature, and then it's even worse...

p>Symonds: "Exactly. So we just hung on and hung on."

AC: So what prompted you to change when you did?

Symonds: "The only people on dry tyres then were Bridgestones, a couple of Toyotas, so we couldn't read too much into it. But we were starting to struggle a little bit on the wet tyres. It was just the judgement more from Fernando than anything that it was the time to do it."

AC: Rubens had stopped the lap before...

Symonds: "Yes that's right, but we hadn't really seen much. So Fernando felt that it was time, so we did it. Before that final stop, Jenson was a bit quicker than Fernando [they were both still on intermediates], so obviously he'd taken a bit less out of his tyres. It's hard to judge the Bridgestone against the Michelin, when the Michelin against the Michelin was also quite different."

AC: Any concerns that there might be more rain?

Symonds: "No, the radar was clear."

AC: When Alonso retired, we saw the wheel nut fly off but there appeared to be at least one other piece of debris as well. Do you know what happened?

Symonds: The wheel nut problem is still under investigation but looks like a problem with the wheel gun - we're not sure yet. A lot of parts got mangled up on the hub itself, so maybe some drive pegs or something like that also flew out."

AC: What about Giancarlo Fisichella's race?

Symonds: "Giancarlo was long on fuel, and everything looked good. He seemed to find it difficult to get past Michael, and I don't know why. Then just before his accident he'd set his fastest sector, so I think he pushed a bit too hard."

AC: Michelin had a clear advantage over Bridgestone on intermediates when it was wet, and the opposite was true as it dried. What have you learned for future races?

Symonds: "That's how it appears, but again it doesn't necessarily mean that you can apply that to every wet race. This was a cold track. In Malaysia and places like that, you can get the warm wet tracks, and then the tyres work differently. But yeah, that's more or less what we saw."

AC: Any thoughts on Turkey?

Symonds: "Another race, another 18 points - we'll see!"

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