Warning! Long entry alert!

This time last year, I did an entry about Renault's somewhat awkward start to the 2007 season, and what consequences might ensue. One year on, it would be intriguing to analyse how the Renault plan has panned out.

While I was correct about certain elements of the Renault plan, there was one factor I failed to take account of properly - Fernando Alonso. I had assumed that he would be staying at McLaren for the foreseeable future and that the Renault connection, however fondly remembered, would never be re-activated.

We now know that Flavio never agreed with that assessment. He began re-negotiations with Fernando before the 2007 season ever got going, in the apparent belief that his position at McLaren would be temporary. This idea would have been reinforced by the initial cause of Alonso's departure - a lack of long-term commitment from the parent company - having been long since resolved. Alonso's previous successes had Flavio convinced that he was a talisman for Renault.

The reason why this proved so key to Renault was that as far as Flavio was concerned, at least one of the 2007 pairing of Fisichella and Kovalainen was always going to be dumped, no matter how well they did.

It should be remembered that an F1 team is made of many people and that there is a limit as to how much effect even the best drivers can have on a team with problems elsewhere. Between difficulties adjusting to the Bridgestone tyres and mistakes in the wind tunnel, it was soon clear that the Renault R27 was no world-beater. This was quite convenient for Flavio, because it would have made employing Fernando much easier to justify to the Renault board.

However, there was a spanner in the works that threatened Flavio's new plan. Renault have perhaps the lowest wages of any manufacturer outfit - as far as I can tell, they've never paid a driver more than 10 million dollars a year. The Renault board are somewhat averse to the big-spend culture that permeates much of F1.

McLaren, on the other hand, paid Alonso a compromise between what they thought he was worth and what Alonso and his intermediary manager thought he was worth (his senior manager, Flavio, had been frozen out of that particular negotiation because he would probably have barred it otherwise). The resulting sum was considerably more than the Renault board was prepared to match from its own coffers.

After several months of attempting to get round this problem (and some messes that need not detain us here), there turned out to be only one way Flavio could have Fernando. A consortium headed by Carlos Slim was prepared to sponsor Alonso - but only if a Latin American was his team-mate. Luckily Nelson Piquet Jr was the primary Renualt tester at the time. He'd done well for himself in GP2 (coming second in 2006) before doing Renault testing full-time in 2007. His potential was difficult to assess, but to judge by the evidence, he was better than the other Latin American drivers who'd not been in F1. Why his manager hadn't signed a deal that allowed him to automatically be promoted in case one of the prior pairing left will forever remain a mystery.

At this point, Flavio had two options:

1) Keep Fisichella and Kovalainen, stop chasing Alonso and annoy Piquet Jr (who'd made no secret of his belief that he should replace Fisichella in 2008). This is the strategy that I suggested Renault should take last April.

2) Drop both Fisichella and Kovalainen in favour of Alonso and Piquet Jr. This would effectively throw away the previous plan in the hope that Alonso would bring in better results (and compensate for Piquet Jr's inevitable learning curve).

Flavio went for the second option. So far, the consequences do not appear good for Renault. Heikki and Fisi have ended up demonstrating good leadership skills at McLaren and Force India respectively, casting doubt on the wisdom of dropping them. Piquet Jr is nowhere near meeting the pre-season hype. While Fernando is putting in the effort as Flavio hoped, it's all come to naught because the R28 is, relatively speaking, no improvement on the R27.

Flavio can blame nobody except himself (and due to Piquet indirectly paying for Alonso's drive, he can't even try). If Flavio can't even criticise Piquet Jr, then he certainly can't change him. Fernando is too central to Flavio's vision to change him either. He's scored points often in the opening races, but that didn't help Fisi keep his place at Renault.

So the only strategy Flavio can do now is to keep his hand-picked pairing, grit his teeth through the inevitable learning curve and hope it comes good... ...eventually. If it doesn't, Alonso will leave, Flavio may join him and Renault really will be up the creek without a paddle. This may work... ...but probably won't because Piquet Jr doesn't seem to be learning as quickly as Kovalainen and the real problems never were driver-related.

Changing the drivers instead of putting all efforts on changing the aero and the car's relationship with the tyres was like fixing a leaky dyke with a tube of superglue - while superglue is perfectly OK for patching some things, dykes are not among them. Changing drivers fixes driver problems (and occasionally team atmosphere problems, as per dropping Alonso for Kovalainen at McLaren) but won't fix a problem with bad aero or dodgy handling of tyres.

And the car improvements necessary are too numerous for Renault to deal with. Which is why Renault are hovering around lower points-paying positions right now.*

* - Sadly, this is the exact same concluding two sentences as I used last year. They're as true now as they were then. I don't even feel that sorry for them this time around...