Thanks for your thoughts. It seems that there's a weakness with the alternator but that it fails mostly in the Red Bull makes me wonder; Newey does like to sail close to the wind in his pursuit of an advantage.
Its not just isolated to Red-Bull though is it. Grosjean had the same in Valencia and the Pirelli test car which I believe is a 2010 Renault has had a alternator failiure since Monza
Yes, I reckon it's primarily a Renault thing. However, it is quite feasible that it might be 'tunable', so as to be more flexible for different chassis â just as a turbo may be set to tun at higher boost by some nuts (usually Japanese Skyline owners!). If this is the case, I would not be surprised â as Max seems to be hinting â if Adrian Newey is running a slightly extreme performance v reliability equation!
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Red Bull are in the development race this year, not ahead of it as they were last year. We know they will push the boundaries (camber, anyone?) and we know that Newey has an attitude about KERS, so Cosi's theory seems perfectly plausible. But it is clear that the Magneti Marelli alternator has a weakness. It's perhaps unfair to say Renault.
If the Alternators are made by Magneti Marelli, then surely Ferrari would be running them too? Don't they sponsor Ferrari? Plus Vettel has said that dumping them should be an option worth considering
OK, here's a different angle: it's a conspiracy! If Magneti Marelli manufacture Renault's alternators (this is something I'd overlooked until reading this thread), maybe someone in their quality control department is being (ahem) selective!?! Hehehe⦠perhaps someone is doing his/her utmost to ensure that the very best components always (only? cough cough) find their way to Ferrari? Or â to put it another way â that the 'not quite so good' bits are still OK, so long as they leave Italy!
I honestly hadn't considered sabotage, i actually was just befuddled as to why it only affected the renault engined cars, and not other customers. I know the wise sage (Gary Anderson) said in practice yesterday that it's not heat causing the failures, it's failures causing the heat.
Well, I wouldn't want to be the source of unfounded rumour (with my totally off-the-wall joke, above), but stranger things have happened haven't they? Hehehehehe… instead of driving, I should be doing this for a living: I'd make a fortune!
Works for modern journo's Pssstt. Did you hear about the rumour of Narain Karthikeyan going to Ferrari for one season as a seatwarmer for Sebastian Vettel Please don't sue me Luca.
I don't see why Red Bull would tune the alternator, it's not really a performance differentiator like tyres and turbos. There was a chance their packaging was causing it to overheat and fail, but apparently it's a failure causing overheating not the other way round. Renault should dump Magnetti Marelli in my opinion, they've cost them a ton of points, Vettel would be leading the championship without those failures. They should look into getting Denso to supply them, they used to supply Toyota so they already have designs for these engine regs, if they contacted them now that should give them plenty of time to adapt their designs for the Renault engines.
Senna pops up second quickest. EDIT: Either Sauber are sandbagging or that car has fundamental grip problems in the slow corners. Perez is 9 tenths off Ricciardo! Just watched Kobayashi's lap, it's clear he's got no confidence in that car, very twitchy.
