STRAIGHT TALK
WELCOME TO F1’S ‘PIRANHA CLUB’, CYRIL
It’s a long time since Ron Dennis welcomed Eddie Jordan to the Piranha Club. Inevitably the membership has changed over the years, but the club is thriving despite Liberty introducing a more collegiate style of governance the previous management would never have permitted.
The cutthroat nature of Formula 1 remains. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and while it’s nice to be popular, it’s rather better to be hard as nails, politically astute and successful at keeping the shareholders on side – something that team principals learn quickly.
One such is Cyril Abiteboul. He has had a good year, as Renault has scored a podium for the first time since its return to team ownership in 2016, and the 43-year-old Parisian has secured the team’s future in Formula 1. This is no small achievement considering the parent company’s recent woes, capped by 2020’s global coronavirus pandemic.
He has even had occasion to smile trackside thanks to the soon-to-depart Daniel Ricciardo scoring a hat trick of fourth-place finishes in recent races and that elusive podium in the
Eifel Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.
If trouble at the top in the form of the scandal surrounding former CEO Carlos Ghosn was not going to lead to Renault opting to bail out of Formula 1, the effects of COVID-19 on car sales could have created the perfect reason for stepping away from the pinnacle of world motorsport. See Honda, Toyota and BMW after the 2008 financial crisis for details.
Renault’s interim CEO Clotilde Delbos undertook a full review of the business, starting last autumn, and while many observers fully expected Formula 1 to fall under the axe, quite the reverse has actually happened.
Her successor, Luca de Meo, has only been in the hot seat for two months but has already taken the opportunity to attend a race – Monza offering the time and place to announce the Alpine brand will carry Renault’s Formula 1 hopes forward, starting next season. The timing of the announcement made for a neat sequence of events, coming two weeks after Renault joined the other teams in signing up to the new, more equitable Concorde Agreement, and two months after securing Fernando Alonso’s impending return to the driver line-up.
Abiteboul had every right to be smiling long before those announcements were made, for May’s confirmation of a Usd$145million budget cap was a fairy tale outcome, a ‘Goldilocks’ deal in which the cap is neither too high nor too low but just about right for the French team. While Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull must downsize, the majority of the rest of the field won’t get anywhere near the cap. Renault is, on paper at least, ideally placed to make the most of Formula 1’s new dawn.
Alpine, which in 2019 sold just under 5000 cars, now finds itself with a Formula 1 project sitting atop an ambitious motorsport programme, including an LMP1 assault on Le Mans. Manufacturers with brands and sales much larger than Alpine would struggle to justify such a programme, but its managing director, Patrick Marinoff, confirmed that the Dieppe company is now the de facto sports division of a group which last year enjoyed total revenues of around £51billion.
The clever, ground-up design of the company’s current A110 gives more than a nod to the future – one in which Renault Group design boss Laurens van den Acker admits lightweight cars offering instant performance from hybrid and fully electric powertrains will be key.
Ambitious times ahead for Abiteboul and the Enstone crew.
Cyril Abiteboul endured a tough start to life as Renault’s team boss, but recent events have strengthened his position
2013 – Present Director of Motorsport, Geobrugg
2008 - 2013 Head of Business Development International, Geobrugg
2006 - 2008 Project Manager, Ed. Züblin AG
GP Racing: Your company’s background is based in the mining industry, rockfall protection and roadside barriers – how did you make the leap over to motorsport?
Jochen Braunwarth: In developing our products for slope stabilisation and rockfall barriers, we did extensive field testing because we wanted to demonstrate they had been scientifically evaluated and could guarantee a certain level of safety. We created this mesh out of high-tensile steel wire and we’re the only company in the world currently capable of manufacturing this type of wire. Our introduction to motorsport came about through coincidence: there was a German speaker working at the FIA Institute when it was looking into this area, and he reached out to us. At the time the FIA was more interested in our testing capabilities than the product itself. I think originally, at most circuits, debris fences were essentially just designed on paper with a few calculations, then installed. And as cars got faster, the solution was to modify that original design by increasing post dimensions and cable diameters – the fences weren’t really tested properly. What the FIA wanted to do was introduce a standard.
GPR: The energies involved in an accident on track can be pretty unpredictable. How did you go about setting up the testing process?
JB: In the UK, certain tests had been done with a wrecking ball fired out of an air cannon. But there was a variation in the speeds so it was giving lots of different results and impact types. What you need is consistency and repeatability in the testing so you can properly evaluate whatever you’re doing with the barrier design. The FIA asked us if we had the capability to conduct tests with this level of repeatability and the short answer was yes. So at first we weren’t testing with our products, we were testing the existing barriers. And the first results were pretty shocking – although they were stronger on paper [than previous designs], they weren’t really absorbing the energy that had to be absorbed. The starting point was a 780kg wrecking ball, simulating the weight of an F1 car, and an impact speed of 60km/h, which was the assumed speed at the end of a run-off area. With that approach we soon came up with a nice system using our mesh, and the FIA issued us with a letter saying we could put that system on the market.
GPR: What challenges did you face in persuading circuits to add these systems?
JB: This was a little over ten years ago, and let’s say I was a young and eager sales guy at the time. I approached most of the German race tracks, showed them all our videos, and, apart from the Nürburgring, they were saying, “It’s a very interesting solution but we don’t need it. We don’t have steel balls flying around at our circuit.” I could understand that: it was a very scientific approach and, although the ball accurately represented what would happen if a car impacted the barriers, they couldn’t make that connection. The Nürburgring could because they’d had a crash where a car’s engine block had landed on the public road outside the track.
This was all a bit disappointing because we’d been researching this for three years. So we approached the FIA again and suggested that a head-on-impact at the end of a straight wasn’t the only kind of test we should be doing; that’s how the second test specification was born, which involves an actual car with 20 degrees impact angle and a speed of 120km/h. Potential customers could relate to that.
GPR: And that has formed the basis for the FIA’S requirements for equipment at Grade One circuits?
JB: Yes – to pass, the fence must not become detached, or deflect or move more than three metres beyond the installation site. Both our fixed and mobile systems meet those requirements, and there’s now nearly 50 circuits worldwide, from country club level up to F1 circuits, which use our products.