Renault Managing Director Cyril Abiteboul has admitted the French manufacturer tried "a bit too much" in changing their power unit in an effort to close the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari this year.

While Honda's problems at McLaren have dominated the headlines in terms of negativity, Renault too has had their fair share of issues with retirements and failures both for their works team and the two Red Bull teams that they supply.

On top of that, the overall performance of their engine remains some way off the leading duo with Red Bull left as the third best team throughout the year despite strong development of their chassis, a lack of upgrades from Renault has also frustrated the Milton Keynes-based outfit with Abiteboul acknowledging it has not been a good year.

"I cannot look professional if I tell you that these were expected problems because we don’t design a new engine expecting that it is not going to work," he told Autosport. "The reality, and that is still a frustrating thing, is that we are still not great at designing first time.

"Having said that, we have done an awful lot on the engine side - the ICE architecture is completely different, the ERS is completely different. We can challenge the decision to do that much in one winter, and frankly, I think we have done a bit too much."

The problem with the Energy Recovery System (ERS) led to Renault using the 2016 specification for much of the year but Abiteboul is confident of the progress being made and is sure that will be noticeable next season.

"It is nearly behind us," he said of the current problems, "it is not behind us yet, but it is a year of consolidation also on the engine side. There will be much more stability next year and we will be able to focus on extracting more performance from the different components that we have introduced, hopefully in a much more reliable manner."