A “disappointing” first day for Renault F1 in Barcelona

After a grand inauguration of the organizational chart in Paris at the very beginning of the month, the Renault team marked its true return this Monday on the Montmelo track. Like the Haas or Force India teams, many journalists gathered a few minutes before the start of the day around the French team’s garage for an official presentation of the brand’s new model, named RS16.

And here is the R.S.16 in her very fetching 2016 testing livery. #BlackIsTheNewBlack pic.twitter.com/cqwAiFpopr

— Renault Sport F1 (@RenaultSportF1) February 22, 2016

Regarding the livery, no surprises were to be expected; the chrome black and a few touches of yellow on the wings and pontoons are still in order as initially announced.

Once the introductions were made, it was time to get started: Jolyon Palmer was given the honor of breaking in the new car. The Englishman was among the first to hit the track that morning. However, he didn’t stay out long, with a meager total of 15 laps completed over the first four hours. The performance was not very convincing: a modest 10th place, at 1:31:351, nearly six and a half seconds off the best time. No major issues were reported, however.

The scenario was hardly different in the afternoon: the 2014 GP2 champion nevertheless improved his times in the last half-hour of the day. But the times were still insufficient: with 37 laps completed, Palmer ultimately ranks eleventh… and thus last in the standings, with a time of 1:29:356, set on Medium Tires, like most of the other competitors. The reading of the time sheet is harsh: the Renault Sport F1 team still has a lot of work to do.

Illustrating the overall impression, Jolyon Palmer stated that the first day of running for the Renault team was disappointing: “We would have really preferred to cover more laps. That being said, we understood the source of some of our problems, which allowed us to do an interesting number of laps in the last hour. We now need to work well to achieve better results in the coming days.”

Faced with these difficulties, the English driver regrets the decrease in the number of training sessions. Compared to last season, the number of pre-season test days has dropped from twelve to eight, before the Australian Grand Prix scheduled in Melbourne on the weekend of March 20: « This is really not ideal. Although I’ve already driven many kilometers and although this year’s car is an evolution of last year’s, we haven’t run enough. It’s frustrating, but I still have three days of driving ahead of me, which gives me the possibility to do a significant number of laps,” confirmed the Renault driver.

Consequently, Palmer does not expect wonders at this early stage of the season «. We now know that the situation will hardly be easy ».

Summary of the day: 37 laps is better than no laps 👍. Tough first day but already looking forward to tomorrow. #JP30 pic.twitter.com/CxnzVqK5Ig

— Jolyon Palmer (@JolyonPalmer) February 22, 2016

But in this rather gloomy assessment, the main objective for Renault Sport today was above all to verify the proper installation of the Renault engine in its new chassis.

Cyril Abiteboul was in any case more optimistic in front of the journalists present in Catalonia. According to the general manager of the team, Renault is doing very good work on its power unit.

« We still have work to do before the improvements are visible, but we are doing a good job with the engine. We know the scale of the task ahead of us. But this situation is typical due to the significant changes we have made this year. »

We are therefore only at the very beginning of the new project approved this winter by Carlos Ghosn. The road will certainly be very long for the team now led by Bob Bell, the same man who led the team to victory in 2005 and 2006. In any case, the French structure has five years ahead of it to regain its former glory.