Much is being written about the 2017 Formula 1 rules and their aim to liven up ‘the show’ and perhaps reduce the gap between the pace setting team and the rest, but Renault F1 chief Federeic Vasseur doubts the pecking order will be much different next season.
Vasseur told ESPN, “It won’t totally reshuffle the cards. Contrary to what you might think, I am not sure the new regulations will be such a big advantage for Renault because I think they will favour well-oiled structures with reactive staff, while we are still in the process of re-building the team.”
“What can happen though is that teams fighting for positions in this year’s constructors’ championship are tempted to still allocate resources to improve their current chassis and find an extra tenth for the upcoming races.”
“On the other hand, for a team like Mercedes, whose place has been more or less secured for some time, it’s easier to shift its attention towards 2017. So it will not really reshuffle the order, structurally at least.”
“Now, the big difference can come from the range of technical choices and philosophies favoured by the teams. We saw it at the time of Brawn GP [in 2009] when several squads had gone for double diffusers and the others had to catch up. This is where you can have the edge.”
Renault has not enjoyed a hassle free return as a works team, morphing from a near destroyed Lotus team they are slowly rebuilding and are plying their trade at the wrong end of the grid.
Vasseur explains, “We had two choices: we could concentrate on 2016 and spend a lot of energy to progress and play catch up, or we could focus on 2017 very early, knowing there were major regulation changes in the pipeline. I don’t know what happened at other teams but we switched to next year very early. We’ll see how it goes.”
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