Renault recruits from Porsche and Ferrari and aims for “5 victories” in 2015
Interviewed by Canal +, Cyril Abiteboul discussed Renault's objectives for 2015, with the stated intention of closing the gap with Mercedes by significantly increasing resources.
After a disappointing 2014 season, despite three victories clinched by Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull, Renault will be keen to erase this setback after four consecutive titles between 2010 and 2013, even if ambitions remain measured at Viry-Châtillon.
Precisely, this Thursday, Cyril Abiteboul, the managing director of Renault Sport F1, received Julien Fébreau, journalist and Formula 1 commentator for Canal +, and spoke about the upcoming season and the challenges awaiting the diamond brand.
« We estimate that the gap between our engine and Mercedes’s at the end of the 2014 season was about sixty horsepower. We hope to halve this gap right from the start of the season in Melbourne, » he assured, before continuing on the encrypted channel’s website: « Unlike Mercedes, we will start the 2015 season with the 2015 version of our engine, both for Red Bull and Toro Rosso. By that date, we will have used about two-thirds of the authorized tokens [the tokens correspond to the parts that can actually be modified by the engine manufacturers during the off-season and there are 32 of them, Ed.] to evolve our engine this year. My goal is to secure at least five wins this season! »
Abiteboul insists that the next version of the French power unit will not represent a drastic change: Our 2015 engine will be an evolution of the 2014 one, but it will not be a revolution. The placement of elements like the turbo and the compressor has not been modified. Even though we closely observed Mercedes’ choices regarding the placement of these elements, we concluded that it was not crucial in our own project.
On the other hand, the resources deployed will be more substantial, with significant reinforcements: « We have increased the number of test benches at Viry-Châtillon. We now have twenty-four, including component benches for batteries, which we didn’t have before. It should be noted that in terms of computing power, Viry-Châtillon now possesses as much as the entire rest of the Renault group combined. We have recruited an engine engineer from Porsche and another from Ferrari, but we haven’t managed to poach anyone from Mercedes. Perhaps we should be more aggressive in our approach, to succeed in recruiting one of their employees! »
On the issue of problems posed by the power unit, the former director of Caterham explains: « The major problem we had to deal with concerns the internal combustion of the thermal engine and the direct injection on the turbo engine. Knocking is a major issue we encountered in 2014 and are working on for the new season. It’s in this regard that we called on the British company Illmor. We entrusted Mario Illien’s engineers with a project study related to internal combustion. The idea is to cross our ideas with theirs to eliminate the less effective solutions. »
Finally, unsurprisingly, Cyril Abiteboul does not oppose a regulation change allowing the switch to 1000-horsepower bi-turbo engines, even if it shouldn’t take shape by 2016: « Renault will not oppose Bernie Ecclestone’s idea of making engines more powerful and more “sonorous,” as long as our brand image benefits and costs remain controlled. The idea is appealing, but it seems to me that it is already too late for it to appear by 2016. 2017 would, however, be an ideal timing. »
