Renault says new F1 engine has exceeded performance targets

The French car manufacturer has introduced an all-new concept for 2017 in a bid to make the steps it needs to close down the gap to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari, and its progress this year has been viewed as key to Red Bull's hopes of challenging for the championship.

Although Renault endured some frustrations with reliability over the Barcelona test revolving around its ERS -  which forced its teams to run it in conservative engine modes – there is some optimism about the potential it has for 2017.

Having known ahead of testing that it faced the possibility of trouble, Renault says it is satisfied with where things stands, as it now faces a crunch decision to work out how aggressive it wants its Melbourne specification to be.

Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul is clear, however, that its priority has to be ensuring it gets to the chequered flag in Melbourne, even though Red Bull will be pushing for as much power as possible.

Speaking to Motorsport.com about balancing out Red Bull's competitive desires against being safe on reliability, Abiteboul said: "Clearly they will be in a position to fight for the championship.

"We know that and we will be doing our utmost in order to enable them to do that - which is to start with a reliable engine for race one."

2017 progress

Having set a target of a 0.3 seconds per lap improvement over its 2016 engine, Abiteboul said that indications were of a bigger step than that.

"I think we are on target, and even maybe I think exceeding that target, subject to reliability," he said. "We came into this with a whole new engine architecture, not just in terms of ICE but also ERS.

"That means quite a great challenge, particularly in terms of reliability, and there is no surprise. We were expecting to encounter some difficulties – we had those difficulties that materialised.

"But the good news is that we are not doing that for nothing, meaning that the performance is there when we are try to extract the performance.

"We were not doing that frequently, because we were really managing distance and life of the engine parts, which are still critical conditions. But we have seen the performance that we wanted to get is definitely there."

Critical call

Renault is now evaluating the choice of specification for the Australian Grand Prix, because it has to carefully balance out power against reliability.

With drivers limited to just four power units for the season, there is a great need to ensure no failures, but it is also aware that it needs to push on with its performance.

"Anything could happen in Melbourne, we are doing everything we can to make sure that only good things happen in Melbourne," explained Abiteboul

"We believe we have a situation that is roughly under control - but these power units are so complex to control that we still have a number of decisions to make before Melbourne that will have an impact on not only the finishing order but whether we get to the finish line in Melbourne or not.

"We are really on a critical path and it is really important to stay focused and not take anything for granted."

Upgrade

Renault has always been clear that decent performance steps were also being planned for the campaign, as Abiteboul dropped a hint about a major in-season step already being run on the dyno.

"As always in the engine life, a number of things that you see today are already different on the dyno, will be different in the supply chain and will be different also in the design office.

"Currently we are testing on the dyno one of the major upgrades that will come on the engine from a performance perspective, so we are always one step behind. Again the good news is that we have not discovered anything new, anything dramatic, at this point of time."