Renault to make a major engine upgrade for the Canadian Grand Prix

The Red Bull team experienced rather difficult preseason testing, suffering from reliability issues, although they managed to clock a few fast laps. However, the first race weekend revealed that the RB13 was not on pace with the Mercedes and Ferraris. Indeed, Max Verstappen, who qualified fourth, was over a second behind Lewis Hamilton’s (Mercedes) pole position, before conceding 30 seconds to Sebastian Vettel, who won the race in his Ferrari the following day.

Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s special advisor, reveals in an interview with Autosport that Renault is planning a first engine upgrade for the Spanish Grand Prix, before implementing an even larger one for the Canadian round, which will be held a month later: « There is a lot of work to do. The race pace was positive. But there is much to be done on our side, and on Renault’s side as well. Montreal will be their biggest advancement. Something smaller is coming to Barcelona, but a reasonable step forward in Montreal. »

The friend of Red Bull’s president, Dietrich Matechitz, admits that the team can still gain performance by better exploiting their chassis. Their two drivers, Daniel Riccardo and Max Verstappen, thus highlight the narrowness of the adjustment window that can be applied to the car.

To the question of whether the planned developments will allow the Milton Keynes structure to get closer to the front-runners, Marko responds: « We hope so, but for that, we will also have to significantly improve our chassis. Our engineers think so, and the simulations say so too. »

Finally, when asked what the Austrian thinks of the pace of the 2017 specification cars on the Albert Park circuit, he appears quite surprised: “I think it was a positive race, but I was so focused on Verstappen that I didn’t watch many other things. But we were only two seconds faster, and that was a bit disappointing.”