Shrieking and wailing, the Renault V-10 did not go quietly into the night.
Nor did it go quietly into retirement. It bellowed and screamed to
magnificent and seemingly impossible heights. And then, after one long,
final 19,000-rpm howl that split the night, came the sounds of silence that
heralded the end of a long era in Formula One.
The final Grand Prix of the 2005 season, held in China, was the final race
of the current V-10 3-liter engine formula, which dates to 1989. Next
year, the rules call for 2.4-liter V-8s.
Renault, which helped start the V-10 trend in 1989 when most others were
running V-8s or V-12s, closed out the era by winning both the drivers'
and the constructors' world championships. And Fernando Alonso rounded off his title-winning season with a solid victory in his Renault in China.
Later that night, as the F1 crews were packing up the cars and equipment to be flown back to Europe, the Renault mechanics decided to give the V-10
engine one final sendoff. They fired up the engine in Alonso's car. Even
at idling speed, a Formula One engine is a noisy beast as it runs at about 7,000 rpm, which is about the redline for most road car motors.
From idle the mechanics started to rev the V-10 to its full glory. I was
working in the pressroom, which is in a sound-insulated area nine floors
above the F1 garages in China. Even from up there, the reverberations were
awesome. It must have been shattering for those close by.
WHAAAHHH! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHAAAHHH! From 7,000 rpm, the engine revved to its full glory of 19,000 rpm, then stayed there, howling magnificently. Eyewitnesses say that the exhaust headers were literally red-hot.
Then, after one last shriek, the engine was silent.
That engine's roots go back to 1989.
At the end of 1988, turbocharged engines were banned in F1 and were replaced by normally aspirated 3.5-liter engines in 1989. Renault, like Honda, decided
to go with a V-10 as a compromise between the V-8 (which had more vibrations) and the V-12 (which weighed more and drank more fuel).
Starting with a clean sheet of paper, the Renault engineers created an
engine that in various forms eventually would win 85 races, seven
constructors' championships and six drivers' championships.
The first win came in the 1989 Canadian Grand Prix, with Thierry Boutsen
driving a Williams Renault.
The Williams/Renault partnership was a fruitful one. Nigel Mansell gave
the combo its first drivers' title in 1992, followed by Alain
Prost (1993), Damon Hill (1996) and Jacques Villeneuve (1997). Michael Schumacher won the 1995 title in a Benetton Renault, and Alonso won the 2005 crown in his Renault. The constructors' titles came in 1992, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97 and 2005.
The final win for the Renault V-10 came in the 2005 Chinese Grand Prix.
Of course, it wasn't all about champagne, victories and championships.
Renault did not win a race between 1998 and 2002 and won only twice in 2003 and 2004 as first McLaren Mercedes, then Ferrari dominated F1.
At the end of 1997, Renault withdrew from F1, but it kept in contact with the
sport via sister companies Mechachrome and Supertec, which supplied its V-10 to a variety of teams. Renault returned in 2001 with a brand-new V-10 that
had a V angle of 111 degrees compared with the 72-degree V angle of its
earlier engines and the 90-degree V used by most other
manufacturers.
The wider V gave the engine a lower center of gravity, but its unique set
of vibrations created a harmonic imbalance that caused reliability problems
the Renault engineers never really overcame. In 2004, with new rules
requiring that an engine last an entire Grand Prix weekend, Renault
decided to switch back to the 72-degree setup for reliability.
To cut horsepower and reduce speeds, the rules reduced the engine
capacity from 3.5 liters to 3.0 liters in 1995. And in the interest of
stability, the rules had stipulated since 1998 that only V-10s could be used.
Like the other engine manufacturers, Renault made huge strides in
performance over the years. Its 1989 V-10 topped out at 13,000 rpm and
developed about 650 horsepower. The 2005 V-10, which had a capacity 500 cc less than the 1989 unit, cranked out more than 900 horsepower and hit 19,250 rpm during qualifying for its final race.
Left unfettered, the V-10s would be nearing 1,000 horsepower in 2006. The
new V-8s will develop about 750 horsepower. The rules permit teams
to use V-10s next year, but they will have rev limiters to reduce their
power below that of the V-8s.
The legacy of Renault's V-10 will continue in its new V-8 as quite a bit of
the technology transfers over.
"Nothing is ever wasted in F1," said Rob White, Renault's F1 engine technical director. "There will always be a bit of the V-10 in the engines that race
in the foreseeable future."
Renault's V-10 also will live on in song. By using various frequencies in
the exhaust noise, each of which corresponds to a particular musical note,
some mischievous engineers tuned the engine to "sing" Queen's "We Are the
Champions" on the dyno and recorded it for prosperity.
Even in retirement, the noise of Renault's V-10 lives on.
Dan Knutson covers Formula One for National Speed Sport News and ESPN.com.