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Formula One
F1: Renault Focusing On Both Mercedes And ‘11
Renault's goals are two-fold over the final weeks of the 2010 Formula One season...
Adam Cooper  | http://www.speedtv.com  |  Posted September 06, 2010   Balen (BEL)
Renault F1 technical director James Allison says the team is devoting most of its resources to its 2011 car. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Renault F1 technical director James Allison says the team is keen to beat Mercedes GP to fourth place in the 2010 World Championship – but not at the expense of preparations for next season.

“We’re currently 23 points behind Mercedes so we’ve got to take four points off them in each of the remaining races,” said Allison. “We only managed to take three points out of their lead in Spa, but I’m hopeful that, if we can maintain our current level of competitiveness, we can start finishing ahead of Mercedes with both our cars. If we can achieve that, and race effectively with no reliability issues, we stand a good chance of catching them by the end of the year.”

However, all teams outside the three involved in the drivers’ title fight have been able to increasingly turn their attention to their 2011 cars.

“By this stage of the season any sensible team will be spending most of its time working on next year’s car, and we are no exception. However, we’ve still got a few more upgrades to come before the end of the season, although it’s fair to say they will not be as significant as those we were bringing to the car at the start of the year.”

Allison says he happy with the way the F-Duct worked first time out in Belgium: “We started looking at F-Ducts way back at the start of the year and, although the gain was evident right from the start, it was also clear that it would be a difficult device to get right. We also knew that we had a very substantial set of conventional improvements that were much easier to implement with less technical risk, so we chose to prioritize these over the F-Duct.

“However, from as early as the Bahrain Grand Prix we had a small group of aerodynamicists establishing what we would need to do to put the concept on our car. Once we had a concept that we felt had a good chance of working properly straight out of the box, we committed to manufacture. It was therefore extremely pleasing to see that the device worked correctly from the first free practice runs in Spa.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 25th season as a racing journalist in 2009. Born in London, England, he saw his first F1 race at age 10 in 1976. He began freelancing for Autosport magazine in 1985 and was on the fulltime staff from 1987-92. He then went freelance again, initially spending two years in Japan before following the 1994 Champcar series from a base in Indianapolis. He has not missed a Grand Prix since Suzuka ‘94, a run that has extended to Abu Dhabi ’09. Adam has written books about Eddie Irvine, Piers Courage and Michael Schumacher and hosts a race preview show on Sirius XM. He has written about F1 for SPEEDtv.com since 2005. Check out Adam's Blog or follow him on Twitter

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