Volkswagen and Red Bull "a good story"

As the German car maker continues to be linked with a move to join the Formula 1 grid, Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo revealed earlier this week that Red Bull Dietrich Mateschitz has said he wanted to convince VW-owned Audi to join the sport.

Berger, who has close ties with Mateschitz after owning a 50 per cent stake in the Toro Rosso team from 2006 to 2008, is convinced Volkswagen coming in would be good news for the sport and for Red Bull.

"There's a lot of potential ready to go," said Berger, adding that he does not believe a deal is imminent.

"Volkswagen Group is a premium brand that could fight with Mercedes, who has raised the game in F1 something like three steps.

"Renault did not spend to keep up, and now is struggling to catch up.

"Somebody like VW coming in, they would [do that]. That would be a good story for Red Bull."

Engine change for Ricciardo

Berger's comments come as Daniel Ricciardo suffered yet another Renault engine failure during practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

The engine, however, was an old unit used in China and Red Bull was working on replacing it during second practice.

"Unfortunately we've had to take the engine out of Danny's car," said Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

"It was always going to be a bit marginal anyway. Unfortunately it's not made the day, so his fourth unit is now going in.

"The one that came out was [previously] taken out after qualifying in China, because it had a water leak... and it didn't look like it healed itself."

Ricciardo had come in to the Spanish GP weekend confident that Renault had cured the early season reliability woes.

"Steps have been made to not make that happen again or at least get more mileage before it does that," he said.

"We are confident that they have pushed the mileage. Reliability-wise it looks like there has been some conclusions, according to the dyno and everything in the factory, so it looks a lot more promising now."

He also made it clear that Renault's focus was on no repeat failures, rather than trying to improve performance.

"For now the performance is not going full steam ahead because of reliability issues," he said. "The main stuff we are trying to resolve is reliability.

"With the fourth engine, we are trying to get it as far as it can go, that extra half tenth of performance. We will put it aside until we are 100 per cent sure about what will happen with reliability."