- Renault
Jerez test gives Renault hope
Renault was reassured by its performance at the opening test of 2015 in Jerez, despite numerous issues delaying Red Bull's progress.
Renault is working with Red Bull and Toro Rosso this year and has been tasked with making up the 10% power deficit it had to Mercedes last year. At Jerez the manufacturer brought its revamped power unit for its customers to try, but Red Bull had issues on the first, third and final days getting it to run reliably.
Nevertheless, Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul is confident the new power unit is on the right track.
"The test this week has been productive and has confirmed that we have taken the right direction with our development choices," he said. "This is reassuring considering the magnitude of the late clarification in regulations with tokens and so on, and how many times we have had to reconsider the various strategic options.
"Yes, we have had a couple of problems, but there have not been any nasty surprises. They were largely due to the fact that, taking our inspiration from the F1 teams, we have tried to push every design decision to the last possible moment to gain as much information as we could. Necessarily this means we experienced some issues on track. However all the issues are understood - and some were even anticipated - so we haven't suffered any setbacks.
"It's impossible to say where we are relative to the competition as others are running different plans, tyre specs, fuel loads, and even to a certain extent car specs etc. but our own performance level is where we expected. We have measured it very precisely in the dyno and it matches what we see on track. However just as the cars will be changed in Melbourne, our power unit will also be very different in a month. Reliability wise Mercedes are still the head of the table but we have had a positive week with Toro Rosso and will hopefully achieve this with Red Bull next time out."
Director of operations Remi Taffin said the mileage completed in Jerez was satisfactory given Renault's aggressive approach this year.
"We've wiped the slate clean this year and have new, aggressive targets," Taffin said. "This week was the first step and we have hit nearly all the objectives we set ourselves.
"The primary goals were to fully integrate the power unit into our partners' chassis, eliminate the gremlins and then run as much as possible. We covered more than 2,400km over the two teams, which we can be relatively satisfied with at this stage. The Toro Rosso has been running particularly well and is representative of the mileage we need to achieve this season.
"There have been some teething troubles, which have arisen largely because we have been so uncompromising with our aims over the winter. The energy store in particular was being run as aggressively as we could, but we need to explore the limits of the parts in Barcelona to know how far we can push them. Likewise, a water pump issue was due to a relatively young part we tested on track rather than running extensively in the dyno - we are conscious that we need to pull out all the stops. We have learnt a lot from the running and have now put in place measures to prevent any further problems of this nature going forward."
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