Black magic department: Boffins at Renault’s French HQ were last night praising efforts made during the 2008 season to harness the dark arts following 2 late season victories by Fernando Alonso.
Having slumped from championship winners to also-rans it was felt the French side were entering a period of slow deterioration it would be hard to come back from until the unexpected successes in both Singapore and Japan.
Though work on the engine and aerodynamics were thought to have helped, it was revealed that earlier investment in black magic and mystic runes have contributed most to recent success.
“We’re delighted at the recent victories”, Pat Symonds commented, “and whilst we are pleased at the contribution made by our traditional R&D departments a special mention should go to our Voodoo consultant, Papa Doc Du Bonnet who has allowed us to maximise our performance by the use of black magic, spell casting and sticking pins in Mclaren and Ferrari effigies”
Voodoo: Hoodoo Youdoo
The success of appealing to evil spirits is thought to be tempting other teams into investing in priests of the underworld though they were warned by Symonds that it was a potentially long and difficult route to get right.
“We have been dabbling in this for a long time”, he noted, “but unfortunately, we didn’t fully understand the data coming out of our Hocus-Pocus computer. Instead of maximising our hexing strategy we were often merely creating a blanket curse where everyone ended up crashing – including our own drivers!”
“We have a much better understanding now however and believe we can get mount a genuine Championship challenge”, Symonds cackled over a roaring fire boiling the remains of various amphibians whose limbs had been removed, their blood guzzled and bones ground to powder mixed with a single drop of blood from a sterile jackdaw.
“That is, provided we can find enough nubile virgins to sacrifice and get some of Lewis’ actual hair for this doll we’ve been knocking up in at the back of the garage,” he added.
