By role
October 17 2003

The Renault F1 team has experienced some changes on the Technical staff during this season. Themost noticiable has been the departure of prestigious technical Director, Mike Gascoyne, to Toyota. The move was announced this week and speculation on the paddock expects that Renault may notice the departure during the 2004 season.

However, the car intended to race during the upcoming season has been onthe works since the Grand Prix of Indianapolis of 2002, 13 months ago!:

“During this period, we kicked off two innovative programmes with a view to next year’s championship,” explains Mark Smith, Chief Desigener of the R24. “The first of these concerns the transmission and the second incorporates a new philosophy of suspension design.” The organisation at Enstone afforded the team a hitherto unimaginable luxury: “The amount of time at our disposal meant that not only could we design some brand new components, but even produce and test them in full scale. That is the kind of thing you could only dream about five years ago, and it has given us the opportunity to push our ideas to the limit, to study each one and to ensure they work properly and reliably.”

Besides, the R24 will be based on the succesful R23B that has proven a great success and has scored points in 15 of 16 races as well as 1 win, 4 podiums,2 poles and 1 fastest lap:

“Today’s technology allows us to set very precise targets in terms of how much progress we want to achieve in a given area, and how to do that in sufficient time,” continues Mark. “The design office is hard at work. We have been running a model of next year’s car in the windtunnel for some time, and the figures show we are on the right track.”

Renault F1 has built a dual team of design that allows them to concentrate 100% on the car. This way Mark was in charge of the design of the R24 while Tim Densham was in charge of the design and evolution of the R23. Tim will now concentrate on the design of the R25 to see its racing debut in March of 2005, not less than 17 months from now.

The new RS24 engine is also a concern for the fans after the departure of Jean-Jacques His to Masseratti some months ago. His was a big deffender of the wide V angle that renault has been using in the last three seasons.

Soon after the announcement of his departure, renault announced the return to a more convential architectured engine.

Since the expected time to develop a new structured engine is qyuite large many insiders thought that Renault planned to evolve the old Supertec engine of 72 degrees in order to have an engine good enough to last an entire weekend as the new regulations will demand.

The goals of the new engine will be reliability, size, weight and power.

The Poject Director of the RS24, Léon Taillieu, explains it all:

"Reliability will be our number-one priority for next season,” he explains. “The reason behind our choice of this new architecture is that it will be less technically risky than its predecessor. We began working in March 2003, and the project spec focuses not only on the vital 700km reliability target, but also packaging, weight and power. The latter should come quite quickly.”

“The decision (to go to a narrower V angel engine) was taken well before the outside world knew about it,” explains Mark Smith. “We have been able to work closely with out colleagues in France from the very beginning of the project, and we won’t suffer at all in terms of packaging or stiffness. We have had enough time to give the car characteristics that are at least as good as the 2003 car in these areas.”

“In addition, we have worked to ensure this engine can use an identical air intake to last year’s, in spite of the fact it is taller,” reveals Léon. “One of our aims was to not disrupt the aerodynamic efficiency of the new car.”

“We tested the new cylinder head on an electrical dyno three weeks ago. This technology allows us to check all the moving parts of the engine without firing it up,” explains Taillieu. “The following week, we conducted the first full test of the new cylinder head, although not using the definitive crankcase.”

Last week, the RS24 growled into life for the first time on a thermal test bench. It was a major first step.

"Early in November, we will make our decision on the air intakes we will use,” continues Léon. “Six weeks later, the gearbox and RS24 will run together for the first time on the test bench. We expect to have achieved a solid level of reliability by this stage.”