Planned upgrades Renault has for their engine during the first half of this season could offer a performance boost greater than the current gap to their rivals, according to managing director Cyril Abiteboul.
The French manufacturer started 2018 with the focus purely on reliability after a number of failures towards the end of last year and a reduction in the number of parts permitted across the entire season.
Battery and turbo failures for Daniel Ricciardo in Bahrain and China have proved issues still remain, however, now Renault is ready to turn up the power, starting from next month’s Spanish Grand Prix.
“We have more stuff coming in terms of engine power from race five onwards,” Abiteboul explained to Autosport. “There are a couple of improvements in the way we are operating the engine and that’s more in qualifying.
“There will be more coming, but obviously the next proper improvement will be with hardware upgrade [but] that’s not going to be before we introduce power unit number two, which I hope will be as late as possible.”
That “late as possible” will likely be the Canadian Grand Prix in June, with the straights of Montreal making it one of the most stressful on engines and will lead on into the bulk of the European races.
As for just how much performance gain the improvements might bring, estimates suggest it could be around half a second per lap, which as Abiteboul pointed out…
“It is more than the gap we have now, in my opinion, from the top teams, certainly in the race at least,” he said.
“We are talking about a substantial amount of in-season development.”
