15/07/2016
NEWS STORY
With impeccable timing, late on Wednesday afternoon, as the second day of testing drew to a close, Renault took to social media to reveal: "Would you believe it, someone in the garage just said there hadn't been a red flag all day - and then that happened!"
The Enstone outfit's tweet was in response to a fan who had tweeted the following in respect of Jolyon Palmer's car: "Looks like the Renault is burning oil, lots of blue smoke coming from the exhaust when on the power".
Sure enough there was a problem, with Renault subsequently confirming: "A minor conflagration on the final lap marked the end of the day".
Ahead of next weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, Team boss Fred Vasseur has revealed that the team is still investigating the cause.
"It looks to be the result of a hydraulic leak and we're naturally investigating what happened," he said. "The fortunate thing is that the fire happened on the final in-lap of the day so we were able to complete all we could for that day.
"There was no issue for Jo and the fire was soon extinguished."
"Although we didn't set the world alight with our lap time we did manage to set the car itself alight which certainly wasn't part of the plan," added Palmer.
"It looks like it was a hydraulic leak," he continued, "but fortunately it was all under control pretty quickly. It happened on our final in-lap of the test so it didn't affect our day's programme however it did give the crew at the track and back at Enstone quite a bit of unexpected work to do afterwards!"
Vasseur also took the opportunity to explain what happened during Palmer's pit stop on Sunday, when the Briton was released without his right-rear wheel, a move the cost him a 10s time penalty.
"It was human error," admitted the Frenchman. "As a team pit stops are conducted and practiced repeatedly but there is no pit crew that never makes mistakes.
"When you think about it, it's is truly remarkable that it is possible to jack up a car, change four wheels and lower the car to depart in around two seconds," he added. "We are working all the time to make our stops quicker and we understand what went wrong in that isolated instance. We have changed the process to ensure the same mistake can't happen again."