Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner is hoping a more level playing field in terms of engine performance will boost competitiveness in 2018.
The Anglo-Austrian team made great progress with their chassis after a difficult start, but the Renault power unit continued to be their weakness without the special modes of their rivals which offer brief boosts in performance.
This particularly hampered their drivers in Q3 in qualifying, as fifth and sixth was a common result and also in wheel-to-wheel situations against Mercedes and Ferrari and Horner sees this area as the final piece of the puzzle.
“We’re seeing a bit of convergence on race day but still in qualifying, there is still quite a differential certainly,” he told Motorsport.com. “The stopwatch doesn’t lie. We’re now going into year five of the hybrid so one would hope they [Renault] do start to understand some of the issues they have been struggling with.”
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The other problem the French manufacturer has faced has been a lack of reliability with the lack of performance with claims Renault were running out of parts in the final races of the season.
“Reliability-wise, engine reliability, it’s probably been the worst year we’ve had since 2006,” Horner claimed. “Our engine partner is working hard to address that over the winter, they need it for their own team as well.
“Hopefully we can then put a campaign together to really challenge Ferrari and Mercedes, who will not be standing still either during the course of next year.”