Raring To Go
by David Ross (11 Apr 06)

Renault's grandly named Megane Renaultsport 225 Renault F1 Team is a limited edition Megane produced to celebrate the company's success in taking both the Drivers' and Constructors' Formula One Championship titles in 2005. Fair enough, it was success hard won, as it certainly wasn't the walkover it had too often been in Ferrari's glory years. But where Grands Prix are concerned, Renault has more reasons than one to celebrate.

What about the anniversary of its first Grand Prix success, achieved 100 years ago with more than a little help from the technology of the time in the first such event ever held? Well worth celebrating, as are the French car maker's F1 titles taken with its own cars and as power-provider for several Grand Prix teams.

So has Renault come up with a scintillating quasi racer? Or a race-ready coupé? No, and quite rightly so. As a prolific producer of road cars Renault is looking to cash in on its Grand Prix success by offering a limited-edition, road-legal sporty model - the Megane F1 Team, for short - which is in dealerships now across the UK.

Hardly a car for shy, retiring types or anyone not wanting to be noticed, the Ultra Blue (not French racing blue it seems), wide-wheeled, low-set Megane three-door can be seen a mile off, its yellow and light blue logo topped off with the words RENAULT F1 Team being particularly conspicuous.

But that said, it's still a Megane, top-of-the-range maybe but arguably a track-tarted version of the previous hottest Megane hatch, the less radically styled Renaultsport 225 Cup with which it shares Renault's potent two-litre turbocharged 16-valve engine and pleasantly precise six-speed manual gearbox. In both cars, it develops a mighty 225bhp and an awesome 300Nm of torque at an impressively low 3000rpm.

The result is a remarkably flexible car that can trickle through rush hour traffic without so much as a hiccup but, let off the leash, disappear into the blue horizon at an amazing rate of knots.

But it's not just the engine that makes the F1 Team version so easy to drive. The Megane has long been noted for its low, wide stance and its Mini-like wheel at each corner, aspects that make it feel firmly planted on the road. In the F1, it’s all the more so as it rides on what Renault refers to as its Cup Chassis.

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