An issue with the MGU-H of Daniel Ricciardo on Friday resulted in Renault changing the same part on both Max Verstappen and Nico Hülkenberg’s car, with Cyril Abiteboul saying the part of a change made ‘in a hurry’.
Renault have been developing the MGU-H in recent weeks, and the decision was made late to put the update on both Red Bull Racing RB13’s and Hülkenberg’s Renault Sport Formula 1 Team RS17, but all three have been forced to swap to a different spec of MGU-H for the rest of the weekend.
The second Renault of Jolyon Palmer and both Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers were still using the older MGU-H so did not need a change, but for the three drivers who have had to change, it is their fourth MGU-H’s of 2017, meaning any more and they will face a grid penalty.
“It meant a lot of changes to the technical definition, and sometimes when you work in a hurry you don’t have time to do all what you are supposed to be doing in terms of sign-off,” said Abiteboul to Autosport.
“There was one particular decision made on the MGU-H where we hadn’t had the time for it to be signed off. We tried something, it was really on the limit of introducing or not introducing that modification.
“Indeed it created an issue on one of the cars only, Ricciardo’s, and that issue meant that we took the decision to change all the others. We tried something and we had the capacity to react overnight, and hopefully this will not repeat again.”
