Although Renault did not head into last weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix expecting to win after they lost the appeal to use their innovative mass dampers, reigning world champion Fernando Alonso’s second placed finish was just as good as a win as he managed to pull out another two points on his rival for the 2006 crown, Michael Schumacher, who finished third.

Renault actually went into this round with the sole intent to limit the damage as team boss Flavio Briatore confessed prior to the start of the weekend…

“We now have to concentrate on the Monza-test to make up lost ground. Here we will have no chance against Ferrari.”

This week in Monza Michelin will test new tyre developments in order to help their teams in the last four events of the season while Renault will be putting their new D-spec engine through its paces. Added to this, our spies in Turkey revealed that the engineers from Enstone will be implementing further changes to the R26 in order to compensate a bit better for the loss of the mass-damper.

“As it has consequences in the driving dynamics, it was impossible to find solutions just based on dyno-work,” said Pat Symonds. “In order to try out counter-measures we need track testing.”

Before Istanbul Renault changed the damper settings and modified the weight distribution but in the places where the mass-dampers were fixed, both front and rear, are obviously not a perfect location to put ballast as it would have been placed too high in the car and would have hurt the centre of gravity, therefore Renault moved ballast into the front wing, which required a new crash-test.