Renault F1 draws a positive assessment from its winter testing

Renault experienced much more pleasant winter testing than last year. The two teams (Red Bull and Toro Rosso) powered by the French engine manufacturer covered almost 10,000 km, although they were not spared from some reliability issues, particularly at Red Bull.

Rémi Taffin, the track operations chief at Renault, nonetheless draws an overall positive conclusion from these winter tests: « Our priority was to cover as many kilometers as possible, and one of our Power Units completed the equivalent of five Grand Prix races between Barcelona I and II. Regarding performance, we would have needed a bit more time, but we were aware of this situation before the tests due to our very aggressive development choices. (…) The potential of the engine is clearly there. »

However, Rémi Taffin readily admits that the work is not finished for the engineers at Viry-Châtillon. It will probably take three or four races before the full potential of the Renault Power Unit is seen: « We have been able to take advantage of the engine’s potential, but we are mainly working on its consistency and regularity, as well as the smoothness of driving it offers. But we haven’t completed all the work we wanted. (…) Just to be clear, tuning an engine is not a matter of two or three days. We are talking about weeks or sometimes months, especially with this Power Unit ».

The managing director of Renault Sport F1, Cyril Abiteboul, agrees: « It’s a rather positive outcome for these pre-season tests. Our priority before the start of the trials was reliability, in order to put an end to small issues detected in Jerez. We have now reached the desired level for Melbourne. »

The competitors of Renault, apart from Honda, have also not underperformed and Cyril Abiteboul is aware of it: « All things considered, there is no major reliability issue for the other teams. It still seems difficult to position ourselves in the hierarchy, but we approach the first race with calmness ».