Renault to introduce "temporary fixes" in Bahrain

Managing director Cyril Abiteboul admits, however, that given the short time period between the two races, it is impossible to guarantee the issues will not be repeated.

Three of the four Renault-powered cars suffered engine problems during the Shanghai weekend, and Renault said it may take up to six weeks to rectify the issue.

With China and Bahrain being back-to-back, Abiteboul concedes there is no way to make sure the problem is gone.

"We have made some real progress since Australia with regards performance and driveability and it's frustrating that the reliability issues of Shanghai threw a cover over these," said Abiteboul.

"We don't take the issues we have seen lightly, but we have taken genuine steps forward and need to focus on our continuing programme of improvements while addressing the reliability concerns in parallel.

"In the short time since the Chinese Grand Prix we have been checking and rechecking systems and procedures to implement fixes for the next race in Bahrain.

"Due to logistics of the back-to-back races a complete guarantee will be difficult but we have made improvements to prevent the race stoppers we saw in China."

Issue was known

Renault's director of operations Remi Taffin said the French manufacturer knew about some of the problems when the engine was introduced.

"As well as optimizing performance, a significant part of our preparations for this race have been and continues to be analyzing the issues from China," he said.

"As a consequence, we will have to make some late calls. We now know that the failures on Kvyat and Verstappen's ICEs are different and unfortunately one of them was known but built in when then ICE was introduced early on.

"The other is still to be fully explained and temporary fixes will be used in Sakhir."