Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo remains positive Renault will make progress with their power unit throughout 2017 despite confirming no major upgrade until 2018.
Managing director for the French manufacturer, Cyril Abiteboul revealed their intentions to only focus on minor improvements after team boss for the Milton Keynes team Christian Horner claimed the energy drinks giant was expecting updates initially for Canada before later stating this weekend’s race in Baku.
Though Abiteboul’s comments left Red Bull concerned, with Max Verstappen questioning how competitive the team can be next year, Ricciardo isn’t making so much of the situation and believes progress will be available throughout the year, beginning from Azerbaijan.
“From what I am aware of there is still going to be improvements,” the Australian said. “I believe what we have now is not the full refined version of the power unit, and they know that they can improve that.
“We are hoping to see some of that even this weekend, so we don’t necessarily have updates but we still got some tweaks which we can fine tune what we’ve got. So it probably does not sound as dull as the article says but we want to keep getting more and more from it.”
Giving an indication of how much improvement he believes Red Bull and Renault can still make on their TAG Heuer-branded power units, the four-time Grand Prix winner responded: “It would be nice if they said we can give you a second by then, but we will take what we can for now.
“I think there will be little bits here and there so it won’t stay static from now to Abu Dhabi. Will we see a second, I guess not.”
Team-mate Verstappen also struck a more positive tone on Thursday, having failed to finish in two of the last three races. The Dutchman would praise the progress that has been made since the start of the season, progress that allowed Ricciardo to finish third in the last three races.
“It has improved a lot,” the 19-year-old said of the RB13. “In the beginning when we were changing bits on the car it was doing really weird things, like really out of balance and just difficult to understand.
“Since we brought some decent updates to the car, and especially the last few races, the balance is there, now we just need to find a bit more overall grip or stuff like that.
“When you look at the data from Canada in the corners it was not too bad. Just little bits and we need a bit more overall downforce, and they we are more or less close to them.
“Of course we want to be better than them but first we need to catch up. And then the rest of the gap we have is, of course, the power.”