Formula Renault and Donington Festival weekend

[Mr Jinxx]

Keep an eye on Ben Hanley

[Russfeld]

Its a shame that Hanley had to do a weekend in Britain for his home nation to notice him...

[Rob29]

What was the crowd like Mathias? have yet to see any news reports of jams blocking the M1...

[Mr Jinxx]

Russfeld - Ben's been noticed ever since he was karting. Maybe not in the public eye so much (i.e. on here, etc) but there are plenty of motorsport people watching him.

[Gaz]

The claim was 40,000 - I'd say more like 20,000.

Excellent meeting, really enjoyed it even if i did run out of dry clothes yesterday!

I'll comment more once I've treated myself to a warm bath!

[bella]

ben was very good, especially when he actually had to overtake in the second race. picked off an awful lot of drivers who should have known better. i'm definitely impressed. one of those rare very decent drivers...

the meganes were *wicked* but they're not single seaters so i'm not allowed to rant about how much better they were than touring cars in here.

[Russfeld]

Renault Sport eeked it out to 52,000 in one of their press releases

[rdjones]

What a good day, boy those V6 Renaults are loud. I have just uploaded a few photos, you can find them at http://www.rdj-pics.co.uk/Photos/200...ton/index.html

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by Gaz

The claim was 40,000 - I'd say more like 20,000.

No there was definately more than 20,000 there, I have not seen Donny as full, definately loads more there than there is for the BTCC.

It was a wicked weekend, even though the weather was really crap on Saturday. Ben Hanley is superb, its strange he hasn't done the whole Eurocup season as he would be a contender for the title. The WS cars are fantastic (as are the meganes). Shame about Rene Arnoux on Saturday!

Does anyone know why the WS cars still have Nissan engines, even though it is called World Series by Renault?

[Marcel ten Caat]

Because Nissan = Renault.

Why ditch a good Nissan engine as used in previous years and change it with a new unproven Renault one ?

The Nissan VQ35 is used in the Renault Vel Satis, Nissan 350Z and some other Nissan/Renault models

[runshaw]

Well why isn't it just called the Nissan world series still?

[Marcel ten Caat]

Because they wanna run the weekend as 1 brand and not World Series by Renault and Nissan

[runshaw]

Yes but it seems strange to me. It used to be called the dallara nissan WS and effectively nothing has changed. Its still a nissan engine with a dallara chasis yet they call it renault WS.

[Marcel ten Caat]

Don't see the problem. Management wants their racecars to be badged Renault and so it happens. They pulled Nissan from (almost?) every autosport series.

Right now Renault can say they start with F.Renault 1.6 -> F.Renault 2.0 -> F.Renault 3.5 -> GP2 (Renault) -> Renault F1
sounds better than F.Renault 1.6 -> F.Renault 2.0 -> F.Nissan 3.5 -> GP2 (Renault) -> Renault F1.

PS.
No I don't work for Renault or Nissan or any organising company of the World Series weekends

[runshaw]

ok

[mac]

Interesting to note the "Mark Webber" logo on the side of Will Power's car - wonder what that signifies?

[Kicking-back]

Maybe Mark is funding him

[Rob29]

Watched WS races on TV.Racing was good but enclosures looked empty.I doubt if there were 20,000-banks have been packed for 50,000 claims in the past. Strangely the hospitality buildings looked busy. Was there free food & drink to attract some besides a free ticket? At least this proves that it is NOT the price of tickets that is keeping crowds away from british circuits. Even with a free ticket,few are prepared to come out on a damp day to a venue with no covered viewing.

[Steevp]

I went, it was my first time at Donnington, it was busy but not uncomfortably so, there were -lots- of people there who wouldn't normally go to a race meeting, even my girlfriend who has been to a few races with me said "Different crowd than usual.."

But my main question is.. where is the best place to watch at Donnington? the most space to sit down was at the Craner Curves, but the racing was dull there, we landed up at the Foggarty S which was pretty good, except for the constant stream of people walking to & fro in front of us.. We kept hearing the commentator mention redgate but when we went down there the fences were too far from the action.

In summary, not my favourite circuit.

[Gaz]

Me and my bro spent most of the day on the outside of Redgate bout half way down - that would be my recommended spot as you can see pretty much half the circuit from there and your pretty close to the paddock...oh and the Redgate pub!

Foggies isn't a bad spot, you normally get quite a bit of action round there altho you feel like your missing out on quite a bit of it being stuck out there...something always seems to happen at Redgate and the Old Hairpin when your stood at Foggies!

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by Rob29

Watched WS races on TV.Racing was good but enclosures looked empty.I doubt if there were 20,000-banks have been packed for 50,000 claims in the past.

You had to be there to see how many people were there. The grandstand didn't have 1 empty seat in it on the WS races, there were rows of people lining the start/finish straight and Goddards, loads of people watching on the straight towards the chicane, it was definately a lot more busy than the BTCC which usually has around 20,000 there. The grandstand was even fairly full on Saturday despite the weather.

The best place to watch was Goddards, something usually happened there. The start/finish straight isn't the best but you get to see side by side action. Redgate is also very good.

I also noticed that there was a different sort of crowd there. There was a guy sat behind me asking if the FRenaults were F3 cars and also asked someone to explain to him why all the field suddenly bunched up when the safety car came out. I also heard someone say the F3000 cars were good.

[mcurtis26]

Getting a different crowd there is no bad thing, I know the tickets were free, but if it emans we get a few more spectators at futuremeetings then its all to the good. Crowd figure was hard to guess really...very busy around start finish and redgae though.

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by mcurtis26

Getting a different crowd there is no bad thing, I know the tickets were free, but if it emans we get a few more spectators at futuremeetings then its all to the good. Crowd figure was hard to guess really...very busy around start finish and redgae though.

Yes you're quite right, i didn't mean a different crowd was a bad thing, just mentioning the fact that it was different from the usual. I reckon some people after seeing and hearing the WS cars will want to go to future meetings.

Yes it was very busy on the start finish straight, i was actually surprised by how many people were there. I reckon when they said over the tanny that there was around 40,000 people there, that is the best estimate really. There was also masses of people walking around in the paddock and the infield where the fun fair was.

[Pete Fenelon]

Renault are claiming 50000+ on Sunday, which I think might be a slight exaggeration, Donny looked about as full as it usually does for BTCC meetings, although a lot of the crowd might've been in the infield. Coming in on Sunday there was virtually no traffic, although we arrived late in the morning.

I was very favourably impressed by the World Series cars - they looked and sounded fantastic (the look was slightly 'early 90s F3000' and the sound was magic, particularly under hard acceleration!). And they clearly have that crucial thing - slightly more power than grip - judging by how busy the gravel traps became in race 2

I saw FRV6 when it supported FIA GTs in '04 and thought it was pretty good, but the combination of the Dallara-Nissan inspired car and a bit more power is an excellent one. Let's hope that the powers that be are looking at the World Series and GP2 very closely when crafting the 2008 F1 regs; less downforce and a car that's a bit more of a handful makes things look great.

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by Pete Fenelon

I was very favourably impressed by the World Series cars - they looked and sounded fantastic (the look was slightly 'early 90s F3000' and the sound was magic, particularly under hard acceleration!). And they clearly have that crucial thing - slightly more power than grip - judging by how busy the gravel traps became in race 2

Quite. The WS cars were absolutely amazing. On Saturday when the track was soaking and the rooster tails were about 20 feet high, when they accelarated out of Goddards onto the start/finish straight you could see the power of the car, it was great to see the drivers grappling with the wheel as they aquaplained! When the F1 car came out I was surprised as it was only slightly louder than the WS cars. I watched the start of both races and most people had ear plugs in! But the races were slightly dull, the UK and Eurocup FRenault races were better.