Could the Renault alternator be Red Bull's undoing?

That article says both that the issue is with low speed corners and low revs. That's fine, but Monza and Valencia are both pretty high speed circuits so it would seem strange that these are the tracks where the issue arose.

I would guess that if the issue is low revs then it's to do with the longer gear ratios used at high speed circuits? But then you would have expected issues at Spa... If the issue is low speed corners then why wasn't Monaco problematic?

Me no understand.
 
sushifiesta I think the issue is that Monza has the highest range of gears from first to 7th ,so changing up incurs very low revs...

At Spa, this is not so much of a problem as the top speed is lower (Due to slightly higher drag), but also, first gear need not be as short (As not even la source is as tight as the first chicane.... (or at least I think that's what they mean!)

(As an example, compare Monza and Monaco.... At Monza, the lowest speed is about 40mph, and top speeds of about 220mph.... so the lowest revs in first gear would need to provide 40mph, with the highest revs in 7th gear would need to provide 220mph...

Compare this with Monaco, with a similar lowest speed (30-40mph at Lowes hairpin) to a top speed of 185mph...

As such, Monza would require a range of 180mph from lowest revs 1st gear to highest revs 7th gear, whereas Monaco would only require a rainge of 145mph....
 
How willing would other engine manufacturers (Ferrari and Mecrcedes) be to supply Red Bull with engines, do you think? To have RB embarrass the "home team" would not go down well in either Italy or Germany.
 
no-FIAt-please - Not entirely true, McLaren have been with Mercedes for years as there was no manufacturer team, from next year they have to start paying for engines, so I would say Merc weren't too happy, but contractually there is not a hell of a lot they can do.
 
Well the two alternator issues of Vettel have already cost him the lead in the drivers chamionship, instead of trailing Alonso by 3- points, he would have been leading by around 3-5 points.
 
Could part of the problem, or the main part of the problem, be the design of the Red Bull? That car has had so many more mechanical problems (namely around the alternator) than the Lotus or Williams. The RB8 has gone through many more design iterations than any other car on the grid right now because of the blown diffuser and this, to me, seems to be related to the problems. But, I'm not an engineer or aerodynamicist, so this is just a theory. Thoughts?
 
OK, so this begs the question: Have there been cases of Renault powered cars having alternator failures previous to this year? If not, what has changed, even with the older models, that means they are failing now? Is it global warming or what :thinking:?
 
I agree with RickD No factory team with heavy investment like to see a customer team beat them with their own engines..on top of that Mercedes let Button go for Schumacher and look who is laughing now

Renault are unique in that they don;t have a factory team as such although their ties with Red Bull will make it the officially factory team and they seem to have close relationship with Williams over Lotus and Caterham

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For the alternator failure.... I don't think Red Bull have been quite as confident with this car then 2010 and 2011 version. also they seem to insist on running a high downforce set up.

I think this is their undoing without the EBD to help them maintain superior corner speeds
 
Apparently another Renault alternator failed yesterday, this time during tyre testing. It was a 2010-spec alternator. Seems like Renault has the design problem, not Red Bull.
 
Feels like 2010, Red Bulls impenetrable reliability of 2011 seems to have vanished but they don't have the car advantage that they did in 2010, I'd say they had the second fastest car right now. In a sense for Red Bull if the alternator was going to break, Monza would be the best as they were never going to win (take out Valencia as Vettel woulda won). I would say that another failure would put them out of the running for the drivers championship. As it stands, Webber is pretty much out of the running and Vettel needs to end his winless run pretty sharpish otherwise it could well turn into a 2 way battle for the Championship with Alonso and Hamilton (unless Raikkonen can turn his consistency into a win or two, he's certainly the dark horse of the contenders)
 
It seems odd to me that Webber after putting himself in a strong position again like in 2009 and 2010 seems to always hit a bad patch of results at the wrong time

the not so quick Red Bull has shown Vettel is still very immature like Hamilton
 
That article says both that the issue is with low speed corners and low revs. That's fine, but Monza and Valencia are both pretty high speed circuits so it would seem strange that these are the tracks where the issue arose.

I would guess that if the issue is low revs then it's to do with the longer gear ratios used at high speed circuits? But then you would have expected issues at Spa... If the issue is low speed corners then why wasn't Monaco problematic?

Me no understand.
Me neither also how can you blame the type of track on a mechanical failure?

Me no understand that either.

Fix it you idiots don't give me excuses......
 
Interesting, as the majority of these bearings for various engine suppliers are actually mad eby the same company in the same factories on the same machines. Without giving too much away I have been told by someone who works for his manufacturer that the bearings and cases are made in very much the same way, with the same materials to the same tollerances so it is unlikely that if it was a manufacturing fault it would onl affect the renault bearings.

It is more likely a design fault in the assembled unit. They have said that this is because of cooling issues, therefore it would stand to reason that the renault unit when finally assembled has a flaw in the design that allows the casing and bearings to expand at different rates according to the tempratures, this would either cause sticking (if the bearing expanded faster than the casing) which would cause wear and therefore movement when the unit cooled down a little causing further damage and failure, or excessive movement (the casing expanding faster than the bearing) which would cause almost instantaneous damage to the whole unit causing a fast fail.

I can make an informed guess that when these units have been tested (as Renault say they do) they have been done in a lab with cooling provided artificially so the tests may not have found that fatal temperature which causes this issue. In order o find the problem they need to test without cooling and monitor the temps carefully, see the expansion and contraction of each component in the unit (may even be the spindle expanding putting pressure on the bearing) to find their flaw, but this is not a quick process unless you monitor the temps in the race environment to find the proper ranges you need to test against...
 
As usual there was a very good piece by Gary Anderson on the BBC red button this morning. It is not just Vettel who is having problems , it is all the Renault-engined tems. The failures occur in units which have done 500 to 800 kilometres, when they have checked alternators all the teams using this unit have either had failures or alternators which were on the point of failure. This includes Alguersary.

Anderson said that he had talked quite a lot with the people concerned, they have made changes but with no improvement and still are in the dark as tio what the problem is. One thing that they are sure about is that it is not Red Bull packaging (although RBR might say that even if it is).
 
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