Red Bull will use the new alternator at Interlagos

Achilles’ heel of the Red Bull RB8 of Sebastian Vettel – the KERS being more of an issue for Mark Webber’s car – the alternator coupled to the Renault engine is the focus of discussions as they approach the decisive meeting of the season at Interlagos. And for good reason: given the complexity of Fernando Alonso’s task to beat Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull in pure speed with an average Ferrari in qualifying, the Spanish driver’s chances of claiming a third crown seem to rest on a reliability issue or a race incident involving the car marked with number 1. The alternator of the Austrian car is therefore a likely source of problems.

The two Red Bulls as a whole have already suffered three race-ending failures, in Valencia and Monza for Vettel, and in Austin last weekend for Webber, not to mention Romain Grosjean’s failure, again in Valencia. But the problem encountered by the Australian must have increased Christian Horner’s nervous foot twitches: the alternator in question was the 2011 model, which had not been prone to failure until now.

A failure revisited by Rémi Taffin, Director of Track Operations at Renault Sport F1, who discusses in the columns of *Autosport* the analysis that was conducted: « We sent the parts [of Webber’s alternator, editor’s note] back to our factory in France, dismantled it, and we were clearly able to see that the problem was the same as the one encountered in Valencia and Monza. It was exactly the same failure [a defective bearing, editor’s note]. It happened very early in the part’s life cycle and also in our batches of parts, chronologically speaking […]. »

Still in Austin, Renault tested the brand-new version of the mechanism, supposed to specifically and once and for all solve the problem repeatedly encountered since the European Grand Prix, which was previously approved on the test bench. Thus, Romain Grosjean’s Lotus and the two Caterhams were equipped with this new version, which was also sent back to Viry-Châtillon for analysis: “We didn’t encounter the slightest problem,” explains Taffin. “We sent Grosjean’s car’s part back to France to dismantle it and be certain that everything was fine. We wanted to make sure that we had done everything we could, and everything was fine.”

It didn’t take much for Red Bull to decide to use the updated version, before Renault expressly asked all its other customers to follow suit. A maneuver that Rémi Taffin approaches confidently: « Yes [, I am relaxed]. I bet everyone in the pit lane will tell you they are 100% confident for the race, but maybe you’ll find some who will be 99% confident, and I would say I am 99% confident for this weekend. There is no reason [to worry]. We have many other reasons to have a problem – but not this one. »

But why didn’t they change the part earlier when all the tests for the new version were successful? « Because they [the members of Red Bull, ed.] are human, and at some point, as such, they have feelings. It was a joint decision, so we put everything on the table and decided together that we had to take this path [continue using the 2011 version, ed.]. We had everything we needed to set up both the old and new versions. But the general feeling was that it makes sense to continue using something we have known for a few years […], even if we had a new solution that we knew had passed all the tests. »

And in the battle between reason and passion, it’s passion that won: It may be a little difficult to understand, but put yourself in the situation where you have to make a decision. Sometimes, you enter a store, you’re faced with two different things, and your head says you should buy this one, but your heart says you should buy the other one.

Red Bull supporters will bet in any case that the right decision is the one that has been made. We should know more by Sunday evening at 7 p.m. regardless.