Hulkenberg, Sainz now in "big boy league" - Renault

Hulkenberg finished seventh in the Australian Grand Prix, while Sainz claimed the final point in 10th, despite issues with his drinks bottle making his life difficult.

Abiteboul acknowledged that having two cars consistently in the fight this season will make a big difference.

He warned, however, that his drivers will have to stay on their game in a highly competitive field.

"It's good to see that we have drivers now under pressure from Bottas and Alonso, and they are handling it," he told Motorsport.com.

"They have the hardware to handle it, although obviously it was a track where it's difficult to overtake.

"Carlos was suffering a little bit due to a problem with the drinking system, but I don't think it would have changed anything anyway.

"It's good to have those two cars. But they need to stay at the top of their games, because now they are part of the big boy league."

Although the works team lost out to customers Red Bull and McLaren, Abiteboul believes that there is more to come from the Enstone outfit.

"It's a decent start, and a start that gives us confidence and focus.

"Not having had any reliability issues it will also allow us to focus on what we have to do on the performance side, to hopefully clear Haas, and also to continue fighting with McLaren, because that's going to be an interesting fight during the season.

"It's in line with the target for the season start, it's in line with our expectations, it's in line with our feeling after the tests, but nothing more."

Abiteboul stressed that the team now has to continue to get everything right in order to achieve its potential and take the fight to its midfield rivals.

"It's a sort of demonstration that as we are progressing in the field everything becomes more important, pitstop execution, strategy execution, reliability is a must – and performance.

"They're won't be any back-off possible, that's very clear, we will have to push on in all aspects. So that's what we have to do, and we know we have in the pipeline what's needed both on the chassis send and the engine side.

"So we are coming out of that first race pretty confident about the season to come. It's going to be an extremely long and exciting season."