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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
WOW They let the germans occupy France but they could have driven them out
WTF?!
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 the straights also has to do with that Red Bull is designed to run more downforce than the other cars. If Renault can design a better chassis then they might be able to beat Red Bull next year.
Ram, I agree with this 100%. I think Horner has said as much, without the driver errors they could have been right up there. Merc has had its few reliability issues too lucky could have ended up worse for them - Ferrari appear to have the fastest and most reliable engine YTD. So give Renault a break - I wonder whether the Renault is ready for last gasp darts up the inside and controlled breaking?
Gimme a break. Last year Ferrari could not develop any more HP and went to reducing down force but it was a strategy that didn't work as MB violated the gentleman agreement and brought the higher oil burning engine out early.There is no way to create more downforce without increasing drag. Some can do that more efficiently than others but in the end it can be overcome with more HP. Short on HP short on pace. If the Red Bull chassis had ferrari HP
or MB level horsepower the chassis may not behave in the same way. Saying the Renault makes enough HP is simply delusional. Why isn't the factory car as fast as the RBR car.
I don't think so. They are missing top end power which compromises them on circuits with long straights.
Having to take penalties for replacing parts doesn't help either.
An F1 chassis design is such an complicated process. There is an correlation between power modes, airflows, cooling, tire management, downforce, drag etc. It's doubtful that Renault will improve enough to overtake RB. The RB isn't just about have more downforce it has more downforce versus drag and better mechanical grip.
Some uncomfortable truths for those that love to hate on Renault. At least what he's saying is anecdotically supported by fact. Loved the digs at Red Bull. Shocking to think that only two of RB failures were really down to PU. RB has been very successful in deflecting attention from their own incompetence in losing points, I was really placing blame squarely on Renault up to this point.
It could be, until you realize its Abiteboul, F1's second rate Mysterio, who says those "truths". I dont think the MGU-K issues all Renault teams have suffered from can be explained by Red Bull's racing incidents, those issues that Renault in part patched on their own cars but not their customers.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that Abiteboul is taking this from thin air: Red Bull would not have taken the risk and switched to Honda if they believed that they could challenge for the title with Renault. All the rest is just smoke and mirrors.
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Ram Samartha
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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]