Renault Sport managing director Cyril Abiteboul believes his team has suffered as a result of an “arms race” between Mercedes and Ferrari this season.
The French manufacturer has slipped down the competitive order in recent races and has faced stronger competition from the likes of Force India, Haas and Sauber than was perhaps expected.
Trying to explain why that has been the case, Abiteboul thinks the rapid pace of development that the top two teams have had in their championship fight has trickled down to their customers.
“We see that we are in a very tight midfield with most of the cars around us benefiting and tracking the development of the top teams [Mercedes/Ferrari] – who really are in an arms race for the championship,” he told Motorsport.com.
“In my opinion, we are almost a collateral damage.
“We are seeing the collateral consequence and collateral effect of Ferrari having had at some point an upper hand on Mercedes, and then a very strong rate of development by Mercedes to catch up again.”
With Renault being the lowest spenders of the three works teams it means the development has been much less both with the engine, which has now possibly been surpassed by Honda, and on the chassis than those around them.
But Abiteboul isn’t using it as an excuse.
“Under the current regulations, this [the development by Mercedes and Ferrari] is having a positive impact on all of the other [customer] teams, so Force India, Haas and Sauber have gained from that fight between the two,” he continued.
“We are in isolation. It is not an issue because we are a manufacturer, we have full accountability and full responsibility, but we need to get everything to progress.”
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Renault’s season has also been limited due to a lack of confidence in a new C-spec engine, which only Red Bull has tried since Monza, meaning the works team and McLaren has remained on the B-spec which was launched back in Canada.
“The chassis is progressing, but not progressing at a rate that can compensate for the rate of development of the top teams or for the lack of improvement of the engine, because the spec of the engine has not really changed since Montreal,” the Frenchman said.
“But in addition to that, the car may not be at its maximum potential because we have had a lot of evolutions.
“We may need to revisit some of them, and maybe we have some evolutions that are not working the way we want, so it is really hard to give you a definitive conclusion. But it is fair to say that we are not really in a happy place at the moment.”
In conclusion, Abiteboul admits the only way Renault can be in the fight next season is to push harder but he is also confident changes back at base will have a positive effect.
“We see that we cannot afford not to push massively on the engine development and we are currently looking at the targets for next year, and those targets will be extremely aggressive,” he claimed.
“On the chassis side, we need to accept that it is long-term process and Enstone has grown very rapidly. But it is not just about the size, it is about the way that people are interacting between each other, and [executive director] Marcin [Budkowski] is now fully in command in Enstone.
“He is driving the transformation plan for Enstone, which is not just a growth plan. I think we had up until now too much focus on growth: it is not just about growth, it is about efficiency and that will be the focus of Marcin for next year.”