Racing success for Renault and Roland
The Renault Sport Formula One Team has opened up about its relationship with Roland DG and how this ongoing collaboration is supporting the racing outfit in its commercial efforts.
Wednesday, 16 May 2018 11:01 GMT
Renault Sport Formula One Team unveiled the new livery for its racing car in February of this year
Renault Sport competes in the Formula One World Championship and will this year take part in 21 Grands Prix around the world. With a collective audience of more than 400 million viewers, appearance is everything and the team relies on Roland DG to support its image.
The team uses a Roland TrueVIS VG-640 wide-format inkjet printer/cutter at its Technical Centre in Enstone, Oxfordshire, to decorate its racing cars—the same site where they are designed and built. Should the livery on the car be damaged in a race, Renault Sport replaces it in time for the next outing—ensuring that its multi-million pound sponsors get maximum exposure.
Joe McNamara, head of paint and graphics at Renault Sport Formula One Team, explains the racing cars always travel with a number of sticker sets, all printed on the Roland TrueVIS VG-640.
“The team always carries 30 versions of every sticker so they can be replaced if needed. This amounts to around 1,400 stickers for every race," he says. "Eighty per cent of the stickers are sponsor-related so they have to be replaced with absolute precision.
It’s comforting to know that, if necessary, I can find a graphics company with a TrueVIS VG-640 that is local to the track, to whom I can email a file and all they need to do its hit ‘play’ at their end to produce perfect stickers”
“It’s comforting to know that, if necessary, I can find a graphics company with a TrueVIS VG-640 that is local to the track, to whom I can email a file and all they need to do its hit ‘play’ at their end to produce perfect stickers. I won’t see a difference between their stickers and ours.
“We really are part of a Roland family, all over the world.”
Renault Sport will soon build on its relationship with Roland DG by upgrading to the latest GR-640 model. In addition, the team uses four Roland MDX-540 milling machines to manufacture Rohacell foam cores for some of its car parts that require this dense but lightweight foam sheet material.
“The Roland MDX machines are known here as phenomenal workhorses, they just don’t go wrong,” McNamara says, adding: “ In fact, every Roland machine we use is hugely reliable.
“The VG-640 is quick, accurate, easy to operate and easy to clean and the four MDX machines are simply bulletproof.
“We don’t have downtime here. It’s not an option.”
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