The Weekly Grapevine

Be Right Back

Last Sunday in Spain brought the welcome sight of a Renault back on the front row of a Formula One grid.

Whilst its driver, one Fernando Alonso Diaz, inhabited either of the two prime starting slots as recently as last year's Japanese Grand Prix whilst with McLaren, the team he deserted for a single season last had a car on the front row when the field faced the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix starting lights.

There were, of course, exclamations of 'light' in the Media Centre - particularly amongst Fleet Streeters - when 'Ferdie' set his definitive time in Q3 on Saturday, and so, as it turned out, he was.

However, the fact remains that, although the Spaniard was tanked around four laps lighter than his nemesis Lewis Hamilton in the best McLaren, and just two laps off Felipe Massa's opening stint, he obviously drove his heart out to set the time which sent his countrymen (and women) into absolute rapture on Saturday.

Fernando Alonso pushes the Renault © Reuters

Once the respective fuel weights had been calculated and corrected for fuel-burn it was clear the R28 was not the second-fastest car on the day - on adjusted performance the Spanish grid would have looked thus: K Raikkonen, R Kubica, L Hamilton, F Massa, H Kovalainen, N Heidfeld, F Alonso, M Webber - but the bottom line is that Renault raised its game and Alonso handsomely repaid the effort.

Although Alonso dropped to fifth before the engine blew at just after the halfway point of the 66-lap race, he had held a competitive third in the opening stages, and his overall competitiveness certainly set tongues wagging in the paddock after qualifying.

Then, in the process somebody mentioned that, whilst Nelson Piquet had a generally lacklustre race, the Brazilian had qualified his Renault tenth ...

These performances came within hours of his team boss Flavio Briatore having a proposal to delay the introduction of KERS thumped by the majority during a discussion in Toyota's motorhome, and at a time when the entire team is all too aware that its results are being monitored by Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, who is himself under pressure due to declining vehicle sales.

Thus Renault F1 Director of Engineering Pat Symonds was on the money when he told autosport.com after the race: "I always used to say that each race was worth the same, you had the same number of points at each event. But something I realised in 2005 and 2006 is that actually the early part of the season is much more important in terms of motivation and everything.

"So having gone through a year like 2007 and, let's face it, a disappointing start to 2008, it was important to us this weekend to get things back (on track)."

In Bahrain Symonds suggested that the team would display significant gains in performance in Spain after an intensive development programme during the opening trio of 'flyaways', and put the gain at a 'few tenths' - now been quantified at three-tenths of a second.

It was also important for the race's promoters, who have annually extended grandstand seating in the wake of Alonso's successes to the point that, at 140 000, they have a facility with arguably the largest crowd capacity in Europe.

Having been over-subscribed well before the race year on year, Sunday's event saw the place just 80 percent full, and it is highly likely that a poor Saturday performance by the Spaniard would have seen even more folk fail to brave the shambolic traffic jams on Sunday ...

To 'get back (on track)' Renault's engine and chassis departments in, respectively, Viry-Chatillon, due south of Paris, and Enstone near Witney, Oxfordshire have slaved day and (almost every) night to improve the performance of a car which has two identified shortcomings. These are:

Renault V8 © LAT

A down-on-power engine about which very little can be done save for minor, detailed improvements for the duration of the engine-freeze, which Renault themselves instigated. A shortfall in power was alluded to during Friday's FIA Media Conference, and, certainly, Adrian Newey, Chief Technical Officer for Red Bull Racing - which also uses the engines - did nothing to dispel the suggestion.

A chassis with traction limitations brought about by the switch from Michelins (around which Renault based the layout and suspension geometry of earlier designs) to Bridgestones (with which the company had no real experience save for 1999/2000 as Benetton).

Thus the one thing Renault needs above all else this season (and for a few to come) is an aggressive, committed driver, one with fire in his belly, but whose analytical skills and race craft bubble to the fore when the chips are down. This it most certainly has in Alonso, if not, certainly at present, with Piquet.

Earlier in the week Alonso received, if not a slap in the face, then certainly a painful tap, when Ferrari president Luca Montezemolo intimated that the Italian team would not be accommodating the Spaniard any time soon, certainly not whilst Kimi Raikkonen was still dressed in red.

"To line up a Raikkonen-Alonso double act would mean wanting to damage yourself. I want two equal drivers that work together," Ferrari's president said last week.

(Interestingly, former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn has interpreted this as meaning that Alonso is very much on Ferrari's future hit list; that Montezemolo simply meant that a Raikkonen-Alonso double act was out of the question, and that Kimi will retire when his contract is up (2009), leaving the Scuderia's door open for Alonso).

That the double champion can be a complex, emotional chap, with an unfortunate reputation for treachery to boot, is no secret. His rages and threats in 2007 testify to that, as does a dustbin which thudded against the rear wall of FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting's Monza office after being forced into flight by a size eight racing boot as Alonso argued against a grid slot penalty handed down by the stewards in 2006.

Thus he puts in good performances when slightly heated and delivers excellent races when boiling - witness that year's Italian Grand Prix; witness Hungary last year. Equally, when he is on top of his world - as has happened whenever he is performing against the odds, as in Japan 2006 - his performances are simply stuff from the top drawer.

So, given Renault's performances last season and at this trio of openers, what proportion of Alonso's front row start in Spain was down to the driver, how much was down to tank weight and how much was down to the car and team?

If Alonso did not interpret Montezemolo's words as did Brawn - who worked closely with the patrician Italian for a decade, and thus understands his nuances - it is highly possible that the driver, who has high hopes of emulating the three titles scored by his hero Ayrton Senna, took them to mean he had no chance of joining the Italian team, and therefore virtually zero hopes of adding to his two titles.

Ferrari and Renault in parc ferme © LAT

Alonso - who once said he had no intention of going after Michael Schumacher's record, stating simply 'three championships were good enough for Senna, so three are good enough for me' - was targeting a Ferrari drive sometime soon in order to achieve that burning ambition. And then ...

Equally, after a year of feeling at sea with McLaren, Alonso felt he had come home in both the patriotic and team senses, with memories of his glorious 2006 victory on home soil - with Renault - still vivid in his mind.

That alone would have been worth two-tenths in qualifying, and when applied in combination with the three-tenths the down-to-earth Symonds believes the team has found since March, would account for the fact that Alonso out-qualified Felipe Massa's Ferrari whilst carrying just seven kilogrammes less fuel.

Make no mistake: Renault is at present far from being a podium regular, but the tide is turning. Already paddock patter has it that Renault has the jump on Toyota, Red Bull and Williams, and is ready to re-establish itself squarely in the top four.

To do so, though, it needs Alonso, and the word is that he has a clause in his contract permitting him to depart should Renault not be a top four team by mid-season. Where would he go under those circumstances?

With Ferrari having slammed the door, certainly for the moment, and McLaren not exactly tripping over themselves in a rush to sign him - even if he wanted to don silver again - there is but one team which could conceivably offer him the chance of a third title in the near future: BMW.

That, though, is another story ...