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Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul believes that the current Renault engine is good enough to challenge for a world championship. The French manufacturer currently supplies three teams - its factory team, Red Bull and McLaren.
Red Bull has enjoyed the most success out of the three teams this year, taking three victories in the first half of the season. However, the Austrian squad is a long way behind the title fight this year, as it currently sits 122 points behind championship leaders Mercedes.
Red Bull and Renault will part ways at the end of the 2018 season, and while Red Bull has thrown shade at Renault and its dissatisfaction with the current engine, Renault has now said that Red Bull's car is to blame, not the engine.
“It’s very clear, it’s the car,” Abiteboul said to Auto Motor und Sport. “The engine is good enough to put a car in pole position, win races and fight for the title. Red Bull proves it. Without their problems, they would now be fully in the title fight. And only two of their problems had to do with the engine.
“Here we are on schedule with our catching up. I am convinced that we will catch up with Mercedes and Ferrari in 2019, maybe even overtake. I am satisfied with the performance increase. Not yet with reliability. On the chassis side we are still lagging aerodynamically.”
When asked to quantify the gaps between to Mercedes and Ferrari ahead and Honda behind, he said: "That’s hard to express in numbers because everyone has different numbers.
“We believe that in the race we are still five to ten kilowatts behind Ferrari and Mercedes and between 20 and 30 kilowatts ahead of Honda. It’s a bit harder to quantify in qualifying. The chassis plays too big a role, and with Red Bull the comparison is unfair, because they lag behind in fuel development compared to us.”
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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Ram Samartha
Posts: 1,172
I think he's probably right. Red Bull would be in the title fight if they didn't have all the DNFs they had this year, and yes most of them weren't engine related but Max Maldonaldo related. They do have a power deficit, everyone including Cyril acknowledges tha, but part of the deficit we see on... [Read more]