[Deschodt]

Quick and dirty translation from Renault's manager C Abiteboul re: the penalty and the incriminated brake balance system... thought it interesting...


Abiteboul was talking to the french press and admitted that the system incriminated by "ex-force India Racing Point Sport Pesa" was giving a "very small level of assistance to the drivers", in the sense that it reduced the workload slightly but in no way made the car any faster. He regrets the lack of clarity of the rule on that point..

« it was a real satisfaction to demonstrate that our system was legal per the rules. That was also our feeling when we read the extremely comprehensive technical documents supplied by Racing point, but they misunderstood how the system works".

"Bottom line is the driver has 2 less pushes of a toggle to do per lap. I'll let you decide, based on the amount of settings they must change on the wheel per lap, given their level of experience, if that really is something that would make the car faster or not."

"We are technically legal in how we approached this, but it seems we are not following the spirit of Article 27.1 which is completely obsolete in a modern F1. . I say that because there are many driver help systems in that grey area, and nothing in there clearly states which ones are allowed and disallowed. We talk about that with many other teams all the time. Take the example of the KERS deployment over a lap. Technically it constitutes a huge driver help, but nothing formally specifies if you are or aren't allowed to do that automatically. Yet it is tacitly allowed right now. Same with our system, we thought. Automatic KERS deployment is a huge driver help, if it was not automated, that would require a lot of driver management. So again this all a subjective grey area, and if we appealed this, we were gonna fight over subjective points of views and frankly we didn't want to open that can of worms."

Abiteboul also heavily criticized the way Racing point approched this using an ex-renault employee.

« That's really unusual, generally {if you suspect something is off] you ask the FIA for clarification and for a technical bulletin, outside of the race week end. This happens all the time between teams. This time they broke with tradition and prepared a 12 page dossier that was ready weeks ago, and waited for the right opportunity to use it, when disqualifying us would allow them to score more points ».