Renault admits there are still some concerns over the reliability of the new engine which will start the 2019 season.
Having been caught out by the performance gains of their rivals last year, the French manufacturer opted to overhaul their design with the hope of making significant progress themselves.
However, while the numbers on the dyno are looking positive towards achieving that aim, ensuring the new unit can also meet the sustainability required is now the main challenge.
“We’re very optimistic on the engine side,” executive director Marcin Budkowski stated to Crash.net. “But the engine is like the chassis side, it’s never finished until you close the engine that goes to the first race.
“It is very promising in terms of performance but we still have to cross the T’s and dot the I’s in terms of reliability and durability etc, which we are doing now [at the factory] in Viry-Chatillon.
“We are still doing work on the engines that will start the year, and in the end performance and reliability is a trade-off.
“You can extract more performance from any engine but it might not last the number of races, the number of sessions you want it to.
“So we will have to see where that cursor stops in terms of performance versus reliability. But we are optimistic.”
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Regardless of the improvements that are made, the Renault chief admits their prospects for 2019 are still dependent on the performance of those ahead of them.
“Realistically if you look at the situation as it was last year, the gaps, recovering 1.5 seconds of performance over one winter is nearly impossible,” he said.
“We have a regulation change so that could have influenced the pecking order and there are some changes at the front as well that could jeopardise some people’s performance or reliability, so there are external factors, but we are not in control of these.
“Our point of view is to get the best possible car out and do the best possible job with the regulations, do our homework and reach our targets. Overall the pecking order is a question of relative performance.
“If we reach our targets of performance we should be progressing compared to last year, and if the others don’t do as good a job then it is going to be good for us.”
