Autosportin marraskuun ensimmäisessä numerossa (2007 kausikooste, extranumero) oli mielenkiintoinen juttu tästä Renault'n suunnitteluvirheestä, joka periytyi jo vuoden 2006 mallista.
"Visually the car was very similar to the title-winning R26 - aside from it's awful new livery. The wheelbase was identical, the wings and the aero surfaces were remarkably similar, the vee-keel front suspension remained, as did the very low rear wishbones that worked in aero concert with the diffuser and the beam wing. There was a new seamless-shift gearbox and the weight distribution had been moved forward to mate up with the different characteristics of the Bridgestones after years of rearward-heavy cars. Looking at the car, there was nothing obvious that would account for such a dramatic loss of competitiveness. Yet on only five occasions was the team even able to get both cars through the top- 10 run-off in qualifying.
The devil was, of course, in the detail. And it took half the season to track that devil down. And even once that had been done, there was only so much that could be done to exorcise it. Development essentially ceased in August as the team regrouped and looked to incorporate the expensive lessons into next year's R28.
The key to the below-par performance of the R27 turned out to be an aerodynamic modelling shortfall around the front wheels, impacting on the airflow down the whole length of the car. Design decisions based on incorrent information from that modelling problem made the R27 fatally flawed. It was a shortfall that had by fluke been inconsequential on the R26's aero design and had lain undiscovered, but on the R27 resulted in an airflow that in the car's early-season quise detached and reattached in a very unpredictable way. It was all exacerbated by a lack of good dynamic tyre modelling data in the windtunnel. It's only in the last year that Bridgestone has provided miniature rubber windtunnel tyres, but as yet their replication of the way the tyre moves under load is not perfect. There were some fundamental aero impacts of the tyre's under-load shape that were not picked up as a result. In this regard Renault was evidently some way behind McLaren in the sophistication of it's tyre modelling."
Renault'han toi uuden etusiiven muistaakseni loppukesällä ja sillä mitä ilmeisemmin saatiinkin auton kokonaisbalanssia parannettua.