The VW Diesel scandal has been forgotten by consumers, almost as soon as it started, (no surprise there). Sales were unaffected, though they have posted a quarterly loss of £1.5b, the first quarterly loss in 15 years, but that's mainly because they set aside £4.8b for the diesel scandal. That's more than the estimate, and the scandal itself is proving to be far less severe than first indicated, with the US EPA no longer sure that an offence has actually been committed other than by accident, and the software in question not installed on at least half the cars previously thought to be involved. So my guess is VW.
VW sell a lot of cars because they make good cars, and it's not the sort of thing people will make a stand against, any moral issue anyone might have goes out the window when people are parting with that much cash. I think once things settle down VW will be interested again, but this is going to take ages to clear up and VW won't commit to anything while they have those fines looming over them.
I dunno... This might hurt VW fairly hard for a while. We're currently looking at buying a new car and you can get some serious deals on new and used VWs around here. I was talking to a chap at a Mazda dealership a couple of weeks back and he was going on about their VW dealership struggling to get anybody on the lot and struggling to shift inventory. I think people are worried about losing more than the usual depreciation on a new vehicle at the moment.
I would guess as this was not about safety or anything the majority of people consider really important day to day it will all blow over within 6 months. To be honest I think it has been blown out of all proportion, well depending on how the rules are written. My guess is the US emission rules may be similar to the UK MoT rules in that the car must pass the test. OK so bit more to it that that but essentially if the rules are written that a vehicle must pass a lab test and they do then that's fine no matter how they pass the test. BUT and it is a big but, if the rules state emissions while on the road and the vehicles fail that test then VW deserve to be fined. If gov's want lower emissions while cars are on the road they must make the tests road based not lab based. Anyway back to F1. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Red Bull have an engine in development that they think can be ready by 2017. They were in advanced negotiations to brand the engine and team VW. The deal is not dead in the water and VW will come in in 2017 with Red Bull. If not then 2018.
So, the new 'upgraded' renault engine has proven to be slower than the old one, and people slam RBR for calling them inept.
Doesn't look very good does it. Mind you there reports out there that say it was not 11 out of the 12 tokens used it was 7 and they were the internal combustion side of things.The other 4 are turbo upgrades and they were not on Riccy's car!! No matter how many tokens were used or not it was slower and didn't seem any easier power delivery as tyres seemed to wear similar rate to others. So Renault have massive amount to do to get close to Merc power. Fingers crossed Renault or Red Bull will find the missing power and bring a bit of competition to Merc and hopefully Ferrari in 2016.
If Red Bull are going to develop it themselves (or with Mario Illien), then I guess they're excuses will eventually have to run out. Whilst I want to see a challenge to the Mercedes and have some spice at the front of the pack, the attitude of their self entitlement of success that RBR have portrayed the last two years makes me hope it won't be them.
They feel entitled to have an engine that is at least a bit competitive, only a fool wouldn't. And a hamilton fan complaining of people being self-entitled is priceless, such irony.
When has anything said that is to do with F1 not had irony, contradiction or hypocrsy mixed in with it?
Neuer Motor mit weniger Power (Auto Motor und Sport - German) Data from Red Bull's rivals indicates the upgraded Renault engine gave 20bhp less than the previous version.
No surprise. Everytime our computers at work are 'upgraded' they always seem to get slower, or something that worked beforehand no longer does because its not compatible with said upgrade.
fair enough. That said I came to the conclusion years ago that everything obeys the universal theory of irony.
No steps forward, two steps back - who is running this development programme, Papa and Nicole? This thread thread needs renaming, "Renault, should they stay or crawl under a rock in embarrassment?"
I doubt that data is true. I also think it may take a while to fully exploit the advantages of an upgrade these days, if I recall correctly Ferrari seemed to get stronger in the races after their upgrade, presumably as they fine tuned the software on the new unit.
What grates with me about RBR ( Horner in particular ) is when they were successful it was RBR , now they are struggling it's all Renaults fault . Win as a team lose as a team including ALL involved parties ( Team & engine supplier & tyre manufacturer ) IMHO .
That's the reality though. When they were dominant it was mostly about RB and their system integration. Yes Renault contributed, but so did other sub suppliers, none of whom got much credit. The perils of contributing things you want to keep secret, I guess. It might grate with you, but It doesn't stop it being accurate. If the Renault hybrid was a match for Merc, Vettel would probably be a 6 time champion by now. The RB chassis has probably been the best still for 75% of the last 2 seasons despite the compromises they are making to combat ther power deficit and the lost development time.
