Red Bull: Renault has taken “a step back”

In difficulty in 2014, Renault managed to limit the damage and progress in the shadow of Mercedes to achieve, with Red Bull, three victories. In 2015, the first race of the season does not bode well with several technical problems and especially, a sixth place one lap behind the Mercedes and behind Felipe Nasr’s Sauber for Daniel Ricciardo.

In an interview with British journalist Adam Cooper, Christian Horner, the director of the Austrian team, doesn’t mince words regarding the Viry-Châtillon V6 turbo hybrid engine: « It was a difficult weekend for Renault. The engine is just undrivable. You can see and hear it from the comments the drivers make. The most glaring proof is that at the start Daniel had a good launch, then the traction kicked in and you could see the gaps in the way the power was delivered, so there’s a lot to work on. »

« I think it hides so many things regarding corner entry, corner exit, degradation, and tire slip control. You can’t drive the car properly. So then you start adjusting the brake balance to try to compensate, and you’re far from the optimum. You start losing temperature in the brakes, and then the tires don’t work as they should. It’s a vicious circle, » he laments.

Horner compares the situation of the French engine manufacturer to that of Ferrari and for him, the conclusion is clear: [Renault] must have [solutions] and they need them quickly. You can see that Ferrari has made a step forward. Sauber, with all due respect to them, I doubt they have found much [time] with their chassis compared to last year because it is largely the same, with the same front wing, the same rear wing, but you can see that Ferrari has made good progress. Renault, at this stage, seems to have taken a step back. It’s frustrating to see that we are effectively far from where we were in Abu Dhabi in terms of power and traction.

Red Bull will do everything it can to help Renault regain a reasonable level of performance according to the Briton: « Obviously, after this weekend, it’s important that we meet with Renault’s people and try to offer help where we can, because obviously they’re struggling a bit and need to understand things quickly. Out of the four cars we had, two engine problems, one after 5 laps, and a whole lot of traction problems, so it’s not the kind of start Renault can afford to have. »

This weekend, Daniel Ricciardo already experienced a significant issue with his first engine of the season and had to install the second one for Saturday and Sunday. However, the cars are limited to a maximum of four engines this season, under threat of substantial penalties.