Pat Symonds: Engineering a Comeback

Renault's fortunes took a dive in 2007. Now Pat Symonds is the man tasked with turning things around. TONY DODGINS talked to him

If anyone needs convincing of the complexity and competitiveness of Formula 1 they need look only as far as Renault's 2007 season. After back-to-back constructors' championships, the team failed to win a race.

Basically, there were two separate problems, the combined effects of which were pretty cataclysmic. First, some of the techniques used to ensure that wind tunnel tests faithfully replicate what happens on the track turned out to be no longer valid for the extent to which the team was pushing the car's performance.

"Aerodynamics is very non-linear; not the most forgiving of sciences, quite insidious, and it took us a long time to recognise that we were in that environment," says technical director Bob Bell.

Secondly, there was the switch from Michelin to control Bridgestone tyres, which led to further problems in the tunnel on top of the expected acclimatisation time needed to get used to the Japanese rubber.

Experienced executive director of engineering Pat Symonds says that recognition of quite how far the team had dropped from the pace was a shock.

"In spite of the realism that to continually win is near- impossible, it was still very disappointing to drop from challenging for every win to a point where, at the start of last season, our performance was a good two per cent off the front-runners. That was hard to take.

"We had two separate issues and either one of them would have been troublesome but the combination of the two was particularly bad. In investigating the phenomena we suffered, we trawled back an awful long way and saw that part of the problem of correlation actually started when we were still on Michelin tyres. So we mustn't just point in one direction.

"Part of the trouble, I think, was that over the years the expectations we had from the wind tunnel just got better, and better, and better. Years ago we checked everything that came out it in full size and got to the point where the correlation was actually so damn good that we just said, 'Well, we don't need to check it anymore.' Part of the solution was putting in place procedures to make sure that never happens again."

Push Symonds on what actually caused the correlation to slip away and he laughs. "Go and ask Honda, because I'm not telling you! But, to be honest, the fix took longer than I expected. Once we really crashed into it, let's say mid to end of February last year, we realised it was massive.

"I think all of us know that it has happened to plenty of teams over the years and we've seen those who, perhaps because of outside pressure, had to use the scatter-gun approach and just change everything and hope it works. But you never make progress doing that."

Symonds doesn't accept that fighting right to the end of the '06 season was partially responsible for the team dropping the ball.

"We were fighting for the championship right to the end of 2005 and we produced a damn good 2006 car, so no, I don't think that's an excuse."

If Pat is not prepared to spill all the beans, he is happy to provide at least some insight into the team's problems.

"I don't know whether people know that these days we use pneumatic tyres in the wind tunnel. Not that many years ago, a couple in fact, we used to use carbon-fibre wheels and tyres that were all solid. Now though, the tyres are scale models of a real tyre. They are made out of rubber and inflated and the construction is done such that when scale loads are applied, it deflects to the same shape as a real tyre. So they are immensely sophisticated little things.

"With the Bridgestone model tyre that we changed to when they became available, the representation that it gave in terms of its shape, when loaded, was not a precise replication of the real thing. It deflected differently. And that is an incredibly critical area.

"You get very critical aerodynamics where it switches between states. If you can imagine a bit of airflow that attaches and detaches - it's unstable. You have a car that one second is quicker than it is the next. And that is a terribly difficult car to drive. That was our problem at the beginning of last season."

It was the problem that led to Flavio Briatore telling everyone that it wasn't Heikki Kovalainen driving the car in Melbourne, it was his brother. There was poor Kovalainen being judged as a rookie against Lewis Hamilton, in his beautifully balanced McLaren MP4-22, by a world that wouldn't recognise airflow detachment if it bit them.

"It did reflect so much on Heikki," Symonds confirms. "If you have a rookie driver, one of the many things you have to do is give him a car that's easy to drive, forgiving and that he can trust. Rookies make mistakes, that's what it's all about. But we gave Heikki a car that was pretty much different at every corner he turned into.

"When we got a handle on the problem, around Canada time, it was like flicking a switch with Heikki. The car was still slow because it was nine months behind in development, but at least he was able to use it, not make mistakes and actually produce some decent results with it."

You could, in fact, draw a parallel with 2001, when Jenson Button, with just a single season's experience, encountered a Benetton that the team admitted should have been oinking its way around a farmyard. Giancarlo Fisichella coped with that better than Button, just as he initially handled the R27 better than Kovalainen.

"Fisi's experience, coolness and the fact that he'd been through it all before allowed him to just keep calm, not overdrive and actually get a better result than Heikki out of the car. He knew it was going to bite him so he just kept it at a level where it didn't."

The team, of course, is introducing another rookie driver for 2008 in Nelson Piquet Jr.

"Nelson has a challenge in front of him and we need to give him time to develop and make the inevitable rookie mistakes," Symonds says. "Just like with Heikki, it's important that we give him a car he can trust and I hope that this is where 2008 turns out differently from '07. We have to be sure that the R28 is not just a race-winning car but one that inspires confidence from the drivers."

The great plus, of course, is the return of Alonso. What a race team loves is to know that after all the midnight oil has been burned, the guy in the cockpit is going to climb in and wring the car's neck. They don't want to be wondering if it might be half a second quicker with someone else in it. And that's the great motivating force of having a Senna, a Schumacher or an Alonso in the cockpit. It can also make you look pretty damned good strategically!

"Firstly," Symonds says, "it's important to make one thing clear: Fernando would not have made up for the deficiencies of last year's car. But we are now confident that we have overcome those problems and we are desperate to give him the car his talent deserves. I am certain that the combination of Fernando in a revitalised Renault will see him challenging for wins. He knows what he wants from the car and we have shown in the past that we can deliver it."

At the launch of the R28 in Paris last week, Renault's design department explained that the zero-keel design, which they had long eschewed in favour of their vee-keel arrangement, had finally been adopted because of the demands of the Bridgestone rubber and the need to get the aero balance forward to make better use of the tyres. They admitted that, had they known what they know now, it is a route they would have adopted last year.

"We have worked largely to overcome the limitations we found in our on- and off-track development in 2007 and the R28 incorporates the lessons we learned," Symonds says. "It should allow us to get more performance from the car/tyre/aero package.

"We have had to take a more radical approach to the aerodynamics and having solved the problems with the tunnel, we are confident about doing that. The results from the tunnel show that we have made significantly more progress than normal. It now remains to be seen if that is enough relative to the competition.

"This time last year, I said I would be disappointed if we didn't win a couple of races during the season. I was disappointed... but I certainly don't intend to stay disappointed in 2008!"