McLaren Renault partnership confident they can win races

Both McLaren and Renault believe they can win races in their new partnership together. It was confirmed yesterday that McLaren have in fact dropped the Honda engine because of its lack of performance and will have Renault engines from next year, and have already begun their partnership with fighting talk from both Renault and McLaren.

McLaren has endured a tough few years with Honda having failed to score a single podium in their time together and were at their wits end in terms of belief that Honda could eventually come good. However they have only swapped the fourth best engine in F1 for the third best and it is questionable whether or not this move will really pay off in the end for McLaren.

The best result the team have achieved with Honda is fifth place, which for a team who, barring 2013, had scored at least a podium every year since 1980 is a shocking turn of events for what has been a competitive one of the sports most successful teams until the Honda partenership occurred.

McLaren executive director Zak Brown said this on the matter of the new partnership between the two: "We think we have the foundation for a long-term partnership"Renault have a great history in the sport, they've won a lot of championships with Red Bull and won a lot of championships themselves. We're very happy where we are and we think we'll be very competitive together."

Renault boss,Cyril Abiteboul, although avoiding questions on the future of Red Bull and Renault together seemed happy enough with his new partnership saying: "It's a solution which is good for all parties but certainly not an easy decision"

Sam Gale