Blown rear wing only gives small gains – Renault

Renault’s technical director Nick Chester downplayed the gains the team has found with its innovative blown rear wing.
The exhaust on the RS18 has been angled upwards to the maximum degree the rules permit in order to increase performance from the rear wing. It works along similar lines to the exhaust-blown diffusers which were popular before rules were introduced to restrict the position of the exhausts and stamp out the practice.

“It’s like everything else: if there’s a small gain there we’ll have a small gain because it’s available to us,” said Chester.

“It’s not like you’ve got a turbo there, you’ve got to recover energy for your MGU-H otherwise your battery’s going to be flat,” he explained. “So you’re quite limited in what you can do.”

He doesn’t expect the design to face protest threats from rival teams.

“I haven’t heard anything at the moment,” he said. “You can put your exhaust in a bodywork box, we’ve just got it towards the top of the bodywork box. So far no concerns on it.”

“Everybody has to have an exhaust and all exhausts are going to blow the rear wing to a degree. And the whole reason we came up with the bodywork box for exhaust position was to limit how far you could go. If we run to the top of the bodywork box I don’t really see what’s the problem.”

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