Renault is to build an all-new engine for the 2019 Formula 1 season as they look to close the performance gap to their rivals.
The French manufacturer is thought to now have the least powerful unit on the grid following Honda’s latest upgrade which was introduced at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Managing director Cyril Abiteboul has already conceded greater investment is needed to keep pace with their fellow suppliers and now he’s also acknowledged the current product has run its development course.
“It is a new engine [and] one of the reasons for it, and why the Spec-C is not delivering more in terms of performance, is because we are held back by the structural limitations of the [current] engine,” he explained to Motorsport.com.
“Given the ambition in terms of power improvement for next year, pretty much all of the engine will be new. Not only on ERS side, because there is little power and little performance to extract there, but the rest of the ICE will be new.”
Of course the risk of making sweeping changes is ensuring any increase in performance is matched by reliability, which has been a weakness of Renault throughout the hybrid era.
“That is why we need to be a little bit careful and that is why we need to be extremely drastic and have lots of discipline on planning and milestones to make sure that we are not putting ourselves in a difficult position at the start of the season,” Abiteboul continued.
“We are well advanced on the dyno [with development], we have covered lots of mileage on the dyno.
“We had two parts which were a problem this year, the turbocharger and the MGU-K. With the MGU-K, we are running, we have not had any problems so far and we haven’t seen any, either on the dyno or on the track.
“The last spec of turbos seem okay too, but they are not on all cars because of the situation where parts introduced mean a penalty.”
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The Renault chief ended by admitting one surprise in regards to the developmental potential of the current regulations, with Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda all continuing to make significant gains.
“In my opinion what is paying the most in F1 is stability, stability of the objective, of the vision, of the organisation, of the priorities,” he said. “But at the same time, being brave enough to look at what is not good enough or what is not working.
“That is exactly what I have the responsibility of doing with the rest of the management team and one thing that strikes me is that we see absolutely no flattening to the engine development curve, and that is amazing.”