Race pace seem ok. I think we shall wait before making any conclusions.

Let's be realistic guys... everybody seems to be struggling on race pace on the softs. If it doesn't rain on Sunday, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see Robert starting with softs and pitting after the first few laps and do a Melbourne 2009. Renault can make it work.

This isn't ideal, but 8th isn't anything to be worried about. If the temperature picks up tomorrow, great! If not, Renault will find a way to deal with it.

This isn't the end of the world people!

http://twitter.com/rf1paddockpass/status/15951375377

Maybe someone should catch a flight from UK to Montreal and take Turkey or Barcelona wings with himself.

Hezz was right, I take all back. People, what is wrong with you. You all sounds like Virgin fans. Its OK. They all had problems with tires. And what problems do they all have with graining! They’ll have big problems starting race on options.
Anyway, Renault is sandbagging.

Take a look, they tested two different rear wings and even higher df RW didn't help.

sheesh - people are so fickle. EVERYBODY is having problems with getting tires up to temperature.

FP1 and FP2 Summary



Good news is the wings are fine!:) It's just the track is well, really shit atm and that doesn't suit the r30 (or anyone for that matter, but still, I'm sure they'll sort it out!:))

Robert Kubica, R30-03
Free Practice 1: P6, 1.18.662, 19 laps
Free Practice 2: P8, 1:17.529, 36 laps

Robert: It was quite a difficult Friday. In the morning the track conditions were very poor, especially at the start of the session, so we had to wait quite a long time for the track to get better. In both sessions we tried to evaluate different downforce levels because we were not sure what would work best for us. Overall we are struggling with a lack of grip and it seems like everybody is suffering with the tyre wear on the long runs. So managing the tyres will be quite an important factor for the weekend.

Vitaly Petrov, R30-02
Free Practice 1: P13, 1:19.549, 24 laps
Free Practice 2: P14, 1:18.582, 40 laps

Vitaly: It was my first experience of Montreal today so I had to learn the track. It’s a challenging circuit because you need to attack and be aggressive, but also beware of the walls, which are very close to the track. We did some set-up work preparing for the race and evaluated the tyres, which have quite a big drop off in performance here during the long runs, and that could be a problem for the race. We still need to find the optimal set-up, but we have final practice tomorrow morning to work on things.

Technical Debrief with Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer:

Track conditions: The track began the day very dirty and slippery. It did improve, but not enough to make us happy and comfortable with the car. The cars are sliding about and that’s made even more difficult by the fact that we are running with low downforce.

Performance of low downforce package: The new wing package is performing as expected. We did a downforce test and compared our Montreal package against our previous lowest downforce wings and overall we’re happy with our Montreal wings. I’m pretty sure we will run them for the rest of the weekend.

Tyre performance: We ran both tyre compounds (medium and supersoft) this afternoon. It’s difficult to say which one is better in terms of lap time and we still need to look over the data to determine which one we will favour. We will continue monitoring this during final practice tomorrow morning as the track evolves further and more rubber is laid down.

Weather predictions: At the moment we’re predicting a dry day tomorrow and rain on Sunday afternoon – probably after the race, but the forecast can change very quickly here so we will keep a close eye on the weather radar.

I knew it! It's not like they suddenly bring totally diffrent wings. They are changing FW on regular basis, they knew what they are doing.

What for?

Alan Permane said:
"The new wing package is performing as expected. We did a downforce test and compared our Montreal package against our previous lowest downforce wings and overall we're happy with our Montreal wings. I'm pretty sure we will run them for the rest of the weekend."

The biggest problem are the tyres. Both option and prime tyres are screwed after just few laps.

Robert Kubica said in the interview for PIT STOP (polish website) that in the dry race conditions 2 stops wouldn't be enough.

Every team is struggling with warming them up and keep them in good shape for longer period of time.

They didn't found the right balance yet and I think they did only medium and high fuel runs. With lower amount of fuel they (by "they" I mean Robert) would be around P2-3.

Everything can change over the night.

As we know rain is expected for qualy and race so everything can happen. It can be win-win situation for RF1 or total disaster.

Rough translation of that article...

KUBICA: Two pit stops is not enough
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl...en%26safe%3Doff
PIT STOP

In an interview with the portal PIT STOP Robert Kubica said that if the track conditions will remain unchanged, then on Sunday you will have to change tires every five laps. The new surface of Circuit Gilles Villeneuve extremely brutal treatment on tires.

"As of today the situation is such that even two pit stops will not help, because after five laps the tires are in very bad condition - said the Pole to the portal PIT STOP. - You'd have to slide every five laps to keep the rhythm, and of course this is impossible."

"Excessive tire wear affects both blends imported from Bridgestone to Canada: softs and hards. - I rode on hards" - said Kubica.

"Blame for this state of affairs bears primarily new decking, located on most corners in places where two years ago, the asphalt is crumbling. - The new surface is very slippery", the Renault driver said. - "Tires do not get any energy and it is difficult make began to work properly. We all have problems with this, they fight with the overall grip and balance."

Kubica yet fail to assess their chances before receiving Saturday qualifying. - " I never have expectations after my rides, which can be very confusing" - the Pole said. - "We hope to qualify in the top ten, and then we'll see. It is clear that the rate is very compacted, and the teams who have ahead of us, are still before us. Let us wait for tomorrow morning's workout and then define, where is our place."

Latest information from the transfer market are not doing the impression Kubica. Pole constantly reiterates that the decision is still a lot of time. - I know that Ferrari has extended the contract with Felipe, and Red Bull with Mark - he says from Krakow. - For the moment I do not think about next season. The moment of decision comes, but for now I'm busy current affairs and prosecutes.

The pace on last long run with heavy fuel was not that bad but they used harder compound while other teams were rolling on softer tyres. First laps were slower but right after it softer compound suddenly was losing grip and hard tyres were more stable.

I am curious if problems with getting heat to the tyres can be solved a little bit thanks to better grip tomorrow. Any clever mind?

If you are sliding around you are only destroying the tyres without heating them up properly. The more grip the track gives there are less problems with the heat up.

So yes. If the conditions improve tomorow (more rubber on the surface and higher temperature should be enough) there will be less problems with both compounds.

Even if it doesn't rain on Sunday, it looks like the track is gonna be pretty green and the cars are going to slide a lot. Which means a lot of fun and a lot of opportunities to gain places! Lets just hope Robert continues to amaze with his faultless driving.

Stop that BS, sure you can't make any conclusion from the lap times in FP, but analysing the runs, and the team/driver statements, you can conclude more or less. And that is interesting, leads to pretty interesting discussion on several threads.
If the only thing that you can say about this sessions is that it is to soon to discuss anything, then please, keep it for yourself, we know it very well, even if you didn't wrote that.

I find it interesting that Petrov was the fastest man hrough the speed trap all day, racking up a top speed of 319.2km/h

Don't be so rude smart ass.
I know that You know everything, including fuel loads and even more but watch for language boy.

I would find it more interesting if it was Monza not Montreal...

I find it interesting because Red Bull and McLaren were expected to be the top teams; yet it's a Renault - a car without an F-duct or even a "proper" shark fin that is fastest.

Nothing strange. Great suspenssion and low drag chassis, that's all.

Kubica was faster:
http://www.formula1.com/results/season/201...speed_trap.html

;)

A car with its rear wing nearly totally trimmed out will always be quicker in a straight line than a car an F-duct.

All an F-duct does is stall the air, which still creates drag just less of it, whereas a flat trimmed rear wing doesn't work the air at all, et voila, no drag.

The problem with a trimmed rear wing is when you reach a corner.

Then an F-duct is a major advantage.

Renault tried more downforce in practice and I think it didn't give more performance. Why? Because most corners you take on 2nd gear so speed in the corners is quite low. In low speed corners amount of downforce you have doesn't make significant difference. They rely more on mech grip rather than on aero grip.

That's why I think Renault is mostly lacking in S2, where you have a few high speed corners.

And I think it is because of fuel level. They looked like running high or medium all the time. S2 is the sector where you lose most when you are high on fuel.

Look at their onboards they looked like in slow-mo while exiting corners while for example Mercedes seemed shooting out from them.

Times on high fuel were 5s off the pace, like 1.22.5. Mid fuel would mean 1.20.xxx, low fuel runs are 1.17-1.18.

From Canadian GP thread it seems that today both Q and FP3 will be wet. I'm wondering how those low downforce wings will work in wet...

Sure. Why not?

Remember Brasil 2009? Kubi qualified on dry setup with wrong wings (not giving enough downforce even in the dry). He should be fine.

That was incredible... not even Lewis Hamilton could do it. I wouldn't want to bet on Robert being able to do it again, though - especially with all these walls...

Edit: oops read Brazil 2008 instead of Brazil 2009. Sorry.
Youre right. That was a fantastic performance.

The car doesnt look as good as I expected but RK will still be good here... who know where he will finish with a little luck. 2 pitstops need to finish a dry race accordingg to Bridgestone. He just needs one of his to fall in line with an SC period and he would walk off with an easy win.

On merit it looks like a fight for somewhere between P5 and p9. Anything better will be fantastic. Anything less will be a failure IMO.

I was talking about 2009 not 2008...

EDIT: ;] Now it's ok.


Renault is just as fast as Merc here. Maybe not RBR but like Merc and faster than Ferrari? Yeah. Why not.

wohhooo easy there. "potentially", (key word being "potentially" b/c we dont' know anything yet",) one bad move by the enstone guys and you wanna crucify them. renault engineers and technicians have been dong a stand up job all season churning out FW and other updates. during winter testing many people discounted renault, yet surprise surprise here we are challenging merc. each team makes a bad call everyone once and awhile, althought i still wouldn't the RW a bad call, i'll hold off passing judgment on the RW until after all the qualifying is done. so, stay your hammer and nails for now.

Actually I was referring to the known fact that on this track downforce is useful as well

Track is too slippery : Renault back to older suspension geometry today.


http://twitter.com/stephanesamson/status/16001381411

Hopefully they will be able to close the gap significantly (0.7s to RB on this track is too much).

Qualifying in Brazil '09 was irrelevant.
The weather was changing every 30 seconds from wet to dry to drizzle to heavy rain.
Robert went out early at just the right time. Hamilton, Heidfeld and others went out at the wrong time.

Not exactly. Heidfeld for example was out at the SAME time while Robert was out. I also remember (IIRC) Heidfeld spinning out and Kubi overtaking him during qualy.

Not exactly. We discussed it earlier. You said that Heidfeld had been released 2 minutes later / you didn't give any link/. I don't remember that but I might be wrong. I'm sure that Hamilton wasn't released later that Kubica. Remember exactely he was told on the radio that it's gonna rain even more heavily at the end of the qualy. The most drivers if not all were on the track in the same time doing long 5-6 laps runs without pitting.

Robert on the team radio: "Tyres not working at all, oversteer, understeer, car sliding everywhere". It's not looking good

FP3 and we are still nowhere, Kubica complained that the tyres aren't working, oversteer and understeer everywhere.

And who says that Friday Practice Sessions are not telling at all
Now we can only pray for rain.

That last lap was actually really good!

RK P6 atm.

I think they were simply checking another setup configuration and it didn't work.

0.632s off the pace and I know that it is just a normal result for Renault, but they built up the hopes so much before this weekend that now, it is quite a dissappointment (for me at least).

PIT RADIO: You are P1 Robert, P1. Great effort
Robert: F*ck this! I HAVE NO GRIP!
PIT RADIO: Eeeee. Robert... P1? Heeeellooooo?
Robert: I H-A-V-E N-O G-R-I-P! Heeeellooooo?

Where have they been building their hopes up? RK has always taken a cautiously-optimistic approach.

In Monaco, by good performance

Considering the fact the team looked to be nowhere a few laps ago, I'm rather pleased with how this is going.

Renault have had a string of good races - it was always going to end at one point.

Looks good so far 6th and 8th - good job by Vitaly and more to come from Robert.