Renault sees no need to buy a world champion

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Renault chief Cyril Abiteboul prefers to recruit a future world champion than pay top dollar for a driver who has already won the title.

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This week’s poll asks whether we’ve ever had a better F1 field than we do today. @Dragoll suggests a year which did:

I think it is difficult to compare different eras, whether its for this discussion or who is the best driver etc…

However, when you consider the seventies where there were genuinely talented drivers such as Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Clay Regazzoni, Carlos Reutemann, Jody Scheckter, Ronnie Peterson, Chris Amon, Denny Hulme, Francois Cevert, Jacky Ickx, Mike Hailwood, Peter Revson and Niki Lauda. These are all well-known, even to the newest F1 fans amongst us. So when you think of all these amazing names, and see the 1972 season where all these guys were apart of, then its hard to think that any year in the modern era could hold a candle it.
@Dragoll

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On this day in F1

Future F1 driver Ivan Capelli won the Formula 3000 race supporting the Austrian Grand Prix on this day 30 years ago.

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Keith Collantine
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56 comments on “Renault sees no need to buy a world champion”

  1. Great banter from Daniel. There were a few Hamilton fans who completely missed the joke though, unsurprisingly.
    As for Manor, I hope they pick up another sponsor soon. They were my favourite out of the three 2010 teams. And keep fighting, Michael. I wish that the press would leave the Schumacher family alone.

    1. Here’s a question…

      If Lewis had said that, would people consider his comment banter or him being disrespectful to Daniel?

      1. I personally would consider it to be banter. Doesn’t matter which driver said it, it was still a joke. And I can also almost guarantee that there would be far less Ricciardo fans giving Hamilton hate if he said it, compared to the unnecessary hate that Ricciardo got from salty Hamilton fans, as a lot of Hamilton fans are rude.

        1. Come on mate, had Lewis said that he’d be nailed to the wall for that. Lewis is already widely hated just for being him. You really think Ricciardo’s fans wouldn’t lay into him for saying that? Come on now, this is Lewis we are talking about, the man who gets criticized for the clothes he wears, haircuts and generally for existing.

          Every driver’s fan base is filled with a lot of rude people, not just Hamilton’s. Ricciardo’s fans would viewed it as him being disrespectful and come to his defense and that’s what many of Lewis’s fans did.

          I am a Hamilton fan and when i saw it, i just moved on to something else as i didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

          1. I wouldn’t criticize him for making a joke like that at all. Maybe others, but not me. I really don’t know why Lewis himself gets so much hate. It’s not like he commited a serious crime or anything. However, it’s a lot of his fans who annoy me. There were several salty Hamilton fans who missed the joke and made stupid comments at Daniel for that. I know that there’s good and bad in every fanbase, but some Hamilton fans really go too far. I’ve seen it on YouTube, Twitter, and even on this site, which is meant to be free of this behaviour. I know that there are a lot of nice people who are Hamilton fans and you seem to be one of them, but there’s more negativity in the Hamilton fanbase than any other to be honest.

          2. @ultimateuzair You have the people who don’t like him because he’s British, you have the people who don’t like him because he’s successful (and rich), you have the people who don’t like him because he’s living the type of lifestyle he lives and there are the mouth-breathers who think he shouldn’t be driving cars because his skin colour is not the correct one for their white supremacist views.

            There’s your Venn diagram of Lewis Hamilton haters.

      2. Kgn11: The thing is, Lewis didn’t say that. He posted a shirtless pic for Beiber fans to ogle. Daniel made a joke. Maybe I’m missing something, and Lewis’s post was supposed to be funny, but I doubt it.

  2. What a bloke. Holding crazy kart races with 6 year olds on off weekends, sculling champagne from a boot on the podium and straight up calling out other drivers photoshopped bs on twitter.

    Certainly a breath of fresh air in this overly PC and PR’d sport.

    1. photoshopped? are you talking about the out of focus background? or something that was cleaned up for publicity?

      1. I first saw it on phone, and didn’t see you could see his 2nd arm behind the first. Thought it was inflated/warped. My bad.

        1. yeah, I had no idea, I am sure some of his images are ‘cleaned up’ but I don’t think hes short enough in the wallet or long enough in the gut to require any significant changes :) Cheers. & for the record, I would never post that many selfies on my twitter, but I also don’t have to worry about promoting myself like he does, or using twitter as a means for “publicity.” I appreciate his candor a lot though, I think RIC does a good job too, but RIC holds back way too much still :) I like evil Dan “Save it !” :) :)

    2. “What a bloke. Holding crazy kart races with 6 year olds on off weekends, sculling champagne from a boot on the podium and straight up calling out other drivers photoshopped bs on twitter.
      Certainly a breath of fresh air in this overly PC and PR’d sport.”

      “I first saw it on phone, and didn’t see you could see his 2nd arm behind the first. Thought it was inflated/warped. My bad.”

      lmao
      http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/mjl.gif

  3. I wonder who was ocon’s hero growing up……..just can’t put my finger on it.
    Also, while i also tend to romaticize these past eras i think the (kind of sad) truth is todays blend pr-machines would totally blow the doors of anything pre 2010 driverwise (Consider the current-pre-2010-drivers exempt). There is just no competing against todays bred, raised and trained sportsmen. Actually that is probably why they are all boring to unnerving outside the car. Except Kimi. He’s awesome. But he also can’t compete against the borebots any longer :-(

    1. Supertrained and pr-polished athletes are a growing trend in every sport for a long time.

      It’s pretty certain the current champions would beat the past ones, but not so sure who would prevail when given equal training conditions.

      Despite the PR worries, we don’t lack big characters today: Hamilton the agressive flamboyant champion, Kimi the cool one, Ricciardo the big smile, Vettel the discrete and history curious champion, Alonso the controversial, Verstappen the golden boy, Button the gentleman. It’s pretty good for me.

      Obviously these media constructed portraits, such as Senna’s divinally inspired character was

      1. Obviously a person has more “personality after 100-200 Grand Prix…

        Jenson wasn’t an established gentelman after first 5 years, maybe not eve 8-9..

        Hamilton was quite polished for first few years…

        Vettel, much changed from start of his Ferrari drive…

        Who knows how much charisma will grow on todays drivers in the future…

    2. @mrboerns
      truth is todays blend pr-machines would totally blow the doors of anything pre 2010 driverwise (Consider the current-pre-2010-drivers exempt). – I wouldn’t second that.

  4. Do we really have to hear about every vapid thing Hamilton does? All of his instagram is just posing, self-marketing. I honestly don’t think he ever took a picture without thinking how it would make him look on the instagram/twitter or whatever.

    1. I’m not sure how you can be annoyed at someone using their own (operative word being OWN) social media account to post things about them self.

      I’m going to assume to that you follow some of his social media accounts, if don’t, then apologies.

      So my question then is, “if it’s so vapid and it annoys you, then why would you in the first place go through all that trouble to click the follow button?”

    2. Well, for a start Biggsy, he clearly didn’t take that picture of himself. He has a PR team doing all this social media work.

      1. yeah, but they could stand to be a tad more subtle, and less focused on projecting Lewis. If you look at RIC’s twitterings, he has his friends in shot, and even interacts with other people on Twitter. A more successful strategy for sure, something to consider I think. I think Lewis does some of his own tweets though, but the self promotion can be over the top some times. I guess it’s all how ‘intimate’ you take twitter for.

        1. I’m a Lewis fan, I follow his Twitter and Instagram as I do many others yet I only see stuff like this on sites like this, trying to drum up trade by whiling up a it of hysteria, purely because I don’t bother opening Twitter or Instagram. As kgn stated why bother getting all worked up by someone using their social media for social media. Just don’t look at it. It’s like hating the amount of sport/porn/dramas shown on tv, just don’t look at it.

  5. You have to build a championship winning car first… good luck.

  6. Putting money in your car is smarter than putting money in drivers, just ask McLaren…

    Looking forward to a Perez-Ocon line-up next year. :)

    1. I’m of two minds on this, but I hope it is about to change next year and onward anyway.

      Firstly if the driver matters less in modern F1 that is a shame, but no surprise as we see them trundle along conserving everything and having DRS. So in that sense yeah it doesn’t take two WDC’s to do that on a team.

      However, hopefully that is about to start to change with cars more difficult to drive that are faster and therefore more taxing on the drivers.

      I would like think it still holds, and will start to become more important again, that a team is better off with the best most experienced drivers they can possibly afford, because with them comes the ability to get to the heart of problems more quickly, not to mention increasing the odds of doing well on the track in general.

      Mac could be accused of wasting two WDC’s but they are there, and one could easily ask where would Mac be without them? Perhaps even further behind. Surely we all should be hoping that the driver always matters very much in this series, or if just anybody can do it…?

      1. JP once said F1 was 80% the car you have. Because of the development race in F1 that will never change. Are there drivers that are special yes and all details seem to point towards Perez being one of them. If Renault can give Perez a powerful engine I feel we are in for a treat.

  7. “Renault sees no need to buy a world champion”
    That left me a little bit confused, because I thought I remembered him saying just a week or two ago that Renault needed a ‘charismatic driver’ to head the team. And to my mind these two statements run counter to each other. Have I remembered incorrectly and attributed the ‘charisma’ statement to the wrong person?

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      16th August 2016, 8:58

      The ones they were interested in obviously said no!

      1. ColdFly F1 (@)
        16th August 2016, 10:00

        good one @petebaldwin.

        Cyril probably did a ‘Trump’ – he said it literally but meant it sarcastically ;-)

    2. @nickwyatt Just because someone is a world champion does not necessarily mean that they are charismatic…

      1. Good point, very good point.

    3. @nickwyatt I would say Ricciardo and Sainz are very good examples of charismatic drivers that are not world champions.

      1. And would be great to have on a team!

    4. Everyone thinks different drivers are chrasmatic. Depends on what you like. Kimi I think has no personality and could be seen as boring. I agree that Perez has that quality Renault are looking for. Williams daughter seems to think the same. For the most part the mob mentality seems to like the establishment drivers.

    5. Renault need people with charisma who are fast but won’t demand more from the team than it’s able to give right now. World champions tend to fail the latter criterion. However, they are useful for clearly illustrating certain personality traits that would be desirable in the drivers that are wanted without tipping Renault’s hand to early and potentially wrecking wage negotiations…

  8. Gene Haas Classic American. Everyone does it one way and advises the same but no he’d rather do it his own way.
    Then rues the whole system rather than his own system of thinking. So boring… USA, USA

    1. Yeah like a non-American would never have made the decision he did, without the luxury of hindsight of course. It’s exclusively an American thing? And I don’t sense he ‘rues the whole system’ really, does he?

      1. He sure speaks with regret about what happened rather than regretting the flaws of his own thought process.

    2. Yup, pretty much everyone who knows anything about F1 saw that one coming the moment they announced their entry.

    3. Nice to see someone painting a nation of 320 million individuals with one inaccurate brush. :)

      First, you’re (apparently) ignoring that he’s 8th in the championship, and beating Manor, Sauber, and Renault. Second, he’s not “ruing the whole system”, he’s admitting that it would have been cheaper, and more lucrative more quickly, to buy a team.

      Of course, then we’d still only have 20 cars on the grid instead of 22.

      1. That’s the same comment as the fellow above. read his reply for clarification. (America, ranked last of the first world countries in education.)

  9. A Mercedes affiliated driver running #31 on their car. Me likey.

    1. Looks promising. To bad no chance in Manor.

    2. Just to elaborate on the connections:
      – Schumacher drove the #31 Mercedes C11 in the ’91 Le Mans 24hrs
      – Al Unser Jr drove the #31 Penske Ilmor-Mercedes in ’94

  10. Unfortunately no matter how good the drivers were back in the 60’s / 70’s they would not be as good as today’s drivers, purely because of advancements in training and young nurturing. This happens in every way of life, records get broken eventually because naturally we get better as more is invested in it. Look back on old Olympic games and what they needed to do to get the Gold medal and compare to today.
    I’m in no way saying the older generation were not very good drivers, they were the best of that era. If they had access to today’s technologies and workout regimes back then they would have been even faster. You can only compare one person with another when theyve had equal oppurtunities.

    1. I think that is a fair comment and a comparison can be made to the Olympics with respect to technology and training no question.

      However, I think there is a glaring difference in F1 in the 60’s/70’s to now in terms of the mental strength it took knowing the numbers of fatalities and injuries that had high odds of occurring, that would have had to have been a huge factor in how drivers dealt with that aspect or even decided whether to be racers or not in their youth. Only the truly most determined and driven racers, the strongest mentally, needed apply. Nowadays, that element barely exists. Not saying they need to go back to that level of danger…just saying let’s keep in mind what more they had to deal with back in the day. Surviving back then was a feat in itself. What are the truly great feats the drivers are achieving today with the limiting tires and with DRS?

      1. Very good points, i had forgotten about the risk factor. There is no doubt that has an effect on the driving as it was in the past couple of races a question was put to Verstappen about his great overtake on Rosberg at Silverstone. His reply was something along the lines of he saw Rosberg had a wobble and thought why not have a go around the outside and he didnt have any worries because of the run off area.

  11. Renault is quite right… Look at talent outside F1, Vandorne and other drivers similar to that.

    Now they could get Alonso for say 25 milions per year? I bet they could get better value in hiring 100 extra engineers. And then pay some nonchampion driver 400k per year.

    Their issue is not drivers. If their car was 3s a lap faster and power unit 100bhp stronger, they would find a driver good enough to compete and win.

    Look at Red Bull, they take talented drivers and make star out of them.

    They should emulate that.

    1. I agree that’s why Perez would make a great choice to built into a world champion to emulate RB.

  12. Good luck Renault…

    Discounting the merits of having a top of the line driver in any team that is floundering is a free ticket to never getting anywhere. Renault success will be compromised by this decision. Money or the lack of money has blossomed this incorrect idea of progress and their future will remain bleak without change

    1. I also think with their current line up their future remains bleak.

  13. I love F1fanatic, but could do without the vapid instagram and twitter reposts. It just brings down the journalistic tone of the whole site.

    1. @ferrox-glideh Don’t look at them?

  14. Maybe you could stop disparaging ‘Hamillton fans’ @ultimateuzair. It’s the same thing, after all. Untrue, insulting, and not about F1.

  15. Don’t think any wise topdriver will touch Renault before they have results – risking career and season…

    Maybe in 2018 IF the car was fast enough in 2017 there will be a topdriver coming to the team…by a topdriver I do not think of PER …

    Right now KEV and PAL is just fine in the Renault seat – they may loose 1/10 of a second but if the car is 1/1 second slower it reallt doesn’t matter….and maybe – just maybe – we will see that KEV or PAL actually is the starmaterial that Renault is looking for…having anothor season to prove themself..

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