New Renault F1 boss Frederic Vasseur isn't worried about slow start
Renault Sport's new F1 racing director Frederic Vasseur insists he is not worried about the revamped team's current pace – and says that what matters is reaching the target set by the head of the company, Carlos Ghosn.
The Barcelona test was Vasseur's first appearance at a circuit in his new role, but he's been finding his way into the job for several weeks, starting long before he was formally announced earlier this month.
Last week's test started badly for Renault as the car completed few miles in the hands of Jolyon Palmer in the first two days. However, reliability was much better when Kevin Magnussen was aboard for the second half of the test, and on Thursday the Dane ran over 150 laps.
“The first two days were a bit difficult,” said Vasseur. “But as we started the engine at 5 a.m. Monday morning it was no surprise that we had to face small small issues.”
In a busy midfield the true potential of the Renault package is hard to judge thus far, and Vasseur is making no predictions.
“Everybody is playing a game, and it's so difficult to know the level of fuel, and the strategy of the engine, and so on. At the end of the day we can imagine approximately where we are. But to be honest it's not the target – I think that if we want to build up on a mid-term project a strong team, then we have to be focused on reliability. It would be a huge mistake if we were trying to chase performance in Barcelona.”
He insists that a few weeks ago just getting to Barcelona with the new car was seen a major achievement.
“We had so many things to do so far that we didn't spend time to try to imagine where we could be in the first quali and the second quali. We know that it will be very, very tough. We took over the company at the end of December, and to be honest at this stage I think that this meeting we had in Enstone the target to be in Barcelona was just unexpected.
“We have to take it step-by-step, we are in Barcelona, we are improving, we made a good step between the first day and the second day and the second and third, and we have to continue like this and to try to improve. It doesn't matter whether we start from 11th, 10th, ninth or seventh, we had a road map from Carlos Ghosn at the launch, and we know where we have to go. It doesn't matter where we start, we have to reach the target at the end.”
That's a typical pragmatic approach from Vasseur, who says that there's still has a lot of work to do to rebuild the team.
“If you want to be involved in F1 and you fix the target you have to fix the resources in correlation with the target.
“We know that's it a tough period, but it's like this. We took over the company very late, we have to manage the situation, we have to take some risks. But we will do it.”
Regarding how many people will be joining he said: “It's not just a matter of numbers, we have to take the good ones! We plan to have something like 100 persons in the season joining the team. But if it's less it won't be a big deal.”
While he is busy with Renault his ART programs in GP2, GP3 and the DTM will continue to run, but he insists that he will have no direct involvement.
“Zero! On my weekend off I will keep an eye on it. I think I will be a bit busy, and it will be too difficult to focus on something else. To be honest even you keep an eye on it at the end of the day if you are not involved it makes no sense to try to do something. I think I will have a lot of work to do on the Renault project, and I don't want to be disturbed.”
Meanwhile he admits that he's proud to be associated with many ex-ART drivers who made it to F1, including Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
“It was my former business to bring the guys from the junior series to F1, and it's a nice situation to have – I don't know how many because I didn't do the calculation – but perhaps 12 or 14 guys coming from the team onto the F1 grid today.”
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