Renault Sport Managing Director Cyril Abiteboul has admitted the company misjudged the impact of racing at high altitude in Mexico and likely pushed their engines too hard leading to problems.
Four of the six cars using the engines had to retire from the Grand Prix this past Sunday with Toro Rosso driver Brendon Hartley suffering two failures in qualifying and the race. Concerns over Daniel Ricciardo’s unit led to a change before the race and then the MGU-H on the new unit would fail after just six laps.
The two works Renault cars would also retire, yet all this was offset by Max Verstappen claiming a comfortable victory for Red Bull, some 20 seconds clear of Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes in second.
“We’ve made an error in the judgement in our preparation in the way we have been trying to balance performance versus reliability,” Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.
“It’s clear when you look at the pace of the car around the weekend, lots of teams have come here taking the right approach when it comes to dealing with engine parameters and chassis parameters.
“We’re extremely competitive. The flip side is that we weren’t capable of being at the right level of reliability for that level of performance. At the same time, it’s a judgement that has allowed a car powered by Renault to be on the top step of the podium.”
Acknowledging it was the thinner air which caused the overheating, as it more pressure on the ERS unit to make up the performance loss from V6 engine, the Renault boss concedes a more conservative approach should have been taken
“It’s the climatic conditions but we knew that,” Abiteboul said. “We have been racing for two years here, we know what to expect there is no excuse.
“We [need to] maybe take a bit more of a humble stance and accept the fact that the engine needs to be managed. We have to understand what went wrong in the preparation for the next race.”
