Esteban Ocon, Renault, Nurburgring, 2020

Ocon: Renault’s instant speed gave them “great confidence” at Nurburgring

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In the round-up: Esteban Ocon says Renault are encouraged by how easily they were able to unlock the performance of their car at the Nurburgring.

What they say

Renault were quickly up to speed despite limited practice running at the Nurburgring, said Ocon:

It’s quite good that we’ve shown that we can perform without much knowledge on the track and with a very limited amount of running. Obviously it’s the same for everybody but it’s been good to be able perform like that with only two sets of tyres between quali and to have the car that felt like that in qualifying with so little amount of time to change the set-up or to just make the car a little bit better like we would like. The car was performing very well on the high-downforce package.

It’s definitely giving us great confidence because we’ve been struggling in Barcelona and Budapest on those high downforce settings.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Replacing their drivers isn’t the solution to Haas’s problems, says Ben:

They know more than us and will have good enough reasons for keeping these drivers as longs as they have. Neither have much money coming their way by the look of it so the team must have some faith in them, especially Grosjean since he’s driven for them the entire time they have been in F1.

I think it is quite possible that they may keep Grosjean. If they do, most people who don’t actually know about the team as they are not part of it will probably think that is ridiculous, but as I imply, the team know more than us.

Anyway, the team going backwards is more to do with the fact the entire team is relevantly new and not good at progressing. It takes far, far more that just the drivers to move things forward. The drivers are only a very small part of their problems.
Ben Rowe (@Thegianthogweed)

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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28 comments on “Ocon: Renault’s instant speed gave them “great confidence” at Nurburgring”

  1. “It won’t happen unless races get incredibly processional and one of the top drivers gets a very fast and reliable car in consecutive seasons”

    Surely this didn’t happen…right?

    1. @jaymenon10 I was incredibly surprised to see it was me who made that comment. And I’m disappointed that I ended up being right!

      1. Yeah, I guess you must have thought “more of what we got with Schumacher/Ferrari dominance” @fer-no65.

        Off course at the time we couldn’t know it would be Mercedes with Hamilton doing the job (Vettel with RB was the more popular expectation at the time), but fact is, those are exactly the circumstances that teams are hoping to create. Sad to see that no team was able to even get close to Mercedes for more than a couple of races in one go in the last 6 years (and probably won’t even next season)

      2. Congratulations with your CotD* @fer-no65.

        *Comment of the Decade

        1. @coldfly thanks!

          I should get a prize or something… :)

          1. @fer-no65 No offense, but it was stating the obvious, wasn’t it. ;)

      3. @fer-no65 I’m blaming you for this era. You set a prophecy in motion.
        Surprised to see that only you remain active from back then. That’s a test on itself.

        1. @peartree I bet there are plenty more people from back then…

          1. @fer-no65 credit where it is due, tough dealing with yearscand years of ph@nb0ysm, new fans, sensor chip and bye as.

  2. Yes, he should.

    Regarding the COTD: If Haas were to replace one of the drivers, I reckon Magnussen would be more likely to stay than be let go out of the two.

    BTW, a nice prediction back in 2013. If only time travelling was possible.

    1. Honestly, I do think @thegianthogweed makes a good point in the CotD @jerejj. Certainly the drivers are not the biggest of their issues. I think they might stick with Grosjean despite what we think, but I agree it could well be Magnussen who has had slighly more results and brings at least some money to the team.

      But I guess it depends on what Ferrari offer them to pick up an academy driver (or even two?) and whether they are seriously in talks with Perez and the mexican sponsors coming on as much as on how the team sees their drivers.

    2. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
      20th October 2020, 12:09

      A danish journalist reported yesterday that KMag is 99% sure he’s out of F1 at the end of the year

    3. I would question why magnussen would be more likely. Just looking at last year alone, it would have just taken Grosjean not having a MGU-k failure in Brazil and then he would have been tied with magnussen in the standings. And that is despite still having 4 more DNFs than him. I could do a great long list comparing their seasons last year, but I’ve done enough of them and to me it was more than clear that Grosjean was the better of the two. Magnussen is younger and does have a slight chance of improving a little, but Grosjean has a lot of experience both in this team and F1, so I think he would be the best of the two to keep, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep both for the final season before the big changes in 2022.

  3. That article was in 2013 and lots of the comments were about Vettel getting close to or breaking the record. No mention of Hamilton or Mercedes.

    Oh how different 2014 turned out to be.

    1. Probably because most had spent the previous six months calling Hams move to Mercedes everything from stupid to a disaster; and many effectively writing off his career.

      1. Not me. I thought from the getgo that it was time for him to leave the Mac nest, and I believed Brawn when he said where a driver would want to be for the new chapter was with a factory works team.

      2. I was on the site back then, not many were of that opinion. In fact many said ham’s timing was good since 2013 mclaren was a bad car, the team experimented with new suspension layout and the aero was not great either not to mention the tyres were the trickiest in 2012/13.
        Nobody mentioned Ham as Nico had the measure of him, and mercedes had a tyre problem and kept lagging behind rb aero wise.
        Not to say that some did not forsee merc getting the new pu right, it is just that with 4 championships, rb and vettel were far closer to all records.

  4. Ofcourse Vettel should retire. But if nostalgy driven old men, having the value of his name in mind towards sponsors, keep handing him a seat…

    1. I believe Racing Point is right that Vettel will be transformed at Aston Martin. Or rather, back to his old self.

      1. I must be missing something. Not sure why there is an article with quotes from Stewart that obviously predates the news of Vettel going to RP (AM).

        1. @robbie

          ‘[…] Vettel, who turns 33 next week […]’

          Vettel’s birthday was in July. This article is just 4 month old.

          1. @goofy Exactly. We’ve known for numerous weeks that Vettel is not retiring, so Jackie Stewart was commenting after we learned he was not invited to stay at Ferrari past this year and obviously before we learned about his signing with RP.

            Bottom line, he’s not retiring so this old article based on old news is entirely irrelevant that I can see.

  5. Just looked up the stats article when Schumacher got his 91st win.
    F1 Stats Update: China
    No reference to the 91st win and record which would stand at least 14 years.
    Nor any comments (yet); how boring social media was in those days.

    1. @coldfly well that makes sense though, because at the time there were still two more races to go in Schumacher’s career so it wasn’t known that 91 was going to be the record that stood. It was just an extension of his record which had long since passed Prost’s record of 51.

  6. Obviously Vettel’s stock has dropped over the last few years. Those missed championship opportunities really have hurt his confidence. But I’m excited to see how he responds to a new challenge, I expect him to prove many people wrong.

  7. So amusing going through the comments on that 2013 article – many of them left me chuckling quietly. This one though made the chuckling vanish immediately and now I’m all sombre reflecting on what could have been:

    I’m willing to bet a pack of 6 almond rounds (with a tin of custard of course), a Dime bar (half eaten) and a signed picture of Flavio Briatore butt naked doing Usain Bolt’s victory stance, that Jules Bianchi will be the man that beats Schumi’s tally of 91 wins.

  8. Too bad Honda is pulling out end 2021. Pretty sure RB will go back to Renault engines. I don’t think it is going to make that much difference in performance, except in Dieter M’s check book. I even predict a WDC for Verstappen in 2022 in a RB Renault. PS people made fun of me when predicting Alonso back to Renault.

    1. @dutchtreat Sounds good, I’m with you, although it would be better imho if they had their own pu(s) in house some way some how.

Comments are closed.