01/08/2006
NEWS STORY
Renault's Executive Director of Engineering, Pat Symonds, has revealed that the team will use its controversial mass damper system in the Weekend's Hungarian GP, having been advised that the FIA will not take retrospective action against teams which use the device when the appeal is heard.
"We received notification on Monday that the FIA will recommend to the Court of Appeal that teams who have used the mass damper in Hungary should not have retrospective penalties applied when the hearing takes place between before Turkey," said the Englishman. "In light of this, we will use the device again in Hungary."
Symonds insists that his team's (relatively) poor performance in Germany, which saw Ferrari close to within 10 points in the constructors' Championship, was no entirely due to the absence of the mass damper.
"This was not the only factor that contributed to our unsatisfactory result but it goes without saying that removing the mass damper degraded our performance, otherwise the component would not have been on the car throughout the season," said Symonds.
"After using the device for the first time in the final races of 2005, the design and development of this year's car was optimised with it in place. The ride and the behaviour over kerbs of the R26 at the last race was certainly not as good as we have been accustomed to this year. But there were other factors at work as well.
"We were aware before the event that tyre management at Hockenheim could be particularly difficult," he continued. "It is a circuit that puts a lot of energy into the rear tyres, which can lead to blistering problems. As a result, we took compounds with the lowest chance of blistering, but in spite of this we had severe problems with rear blistering during the race - worse than any other Michelin runner. Equally, when using tyres designed to limit blistering, other compromises must be accepted: one is a reduction in grip, the other that the car balance can vary between new and used tyres. This proved to be the case, with the drivers suffering too much understeer in qualifying and oversteer in the race."