Renault says there is no reason why it cannot catch up with Mercedes under the current regulations and believes the law of diminishing returns will curb its rivals' progress in the coming years.
Despite winning three races with Red Bull last year, Renault got life under the new V6 turbo regulations off to a slow start with a significant power deficit to Mercedes. Such was the difference that Red Bull called for changes to the engine regulations at the end of last year, but Renault insists it will catch up over time.
"I would never say that we need to change the regulations in order to be assisted to catch up," Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul told ESPN. "I think we believe there is absolutely no reason why we could not catch up. I guess the question is just when and the amount of time needed to catch up.
"At some point at time the law of diminishing returns will kick in and it will kick in for Mercedes first and then Ferrari. This law will help us in catching them, although I'm not saying we are waiting for them to be limited. But clearly we are behind and need to develop faster and that will be supported by this law. That will happen, we have to be a bit patient but also we have to build a plan so that this delay and period that is difficult for the Red Bull-Renault group is as short as possible."
However, the rules are set so that development of the power unit is restricted further each year as parts become frozen by the regulations. By the end of 2017 35% of components will be frozen and by the end of 2018 95% of the power unit will be set in stone from a performance point of view. Abiteboul says the next two years will be crucial for the long-term success of the Renault RS34 power unit and believes the main limiting factor could be the French manufacturer's budget.
"Clearly one thing we need for the next two years is to really have the right strategy and perfect alignment with all entities that are involved to make sure we make the best possible use of the tokens we have available. This season we have some tokens remaining and more than any other engine manufacturer, so we need to make very good use of that and next year there will be quite a lot [of tokens to spend].
"We pretty much have a completely new engine [this year] and we only used 20 tokens, so you can do quite a lot of changes with the tokens we have and we may actually be more limited by funding than by tokens because it's quite expensive to use those tokens. The one thing that where we need to be very careful is that there is no guarantee that you get performance improvement when you use a token and that's why you have to use it extremely wisely.
"It's not a race of token usage and from my perspective and the next discussion we must have [at Renault] is that the objective is not to consume tokens but to improve lap time. That's why we need to stay calm, not overreact and build a plan not just for this year but next year and also 2017. It's not the job of one winter to cover the type of deficit we have [to Mercedes]."
Speaking in Malaysia, Abiteboul said there was still a lot of performance to be unlocked from this year's power unit.
"We had better driveability, that's for sure, but in two weeks [between Australia and Malaysia] we could not address 100% of the problem, I would say we have addressed 60% and it is already making a big difference. There is more to come on the driveability side and now we really need to put all of that behind us and focus on what is really missing which is a bit of power. I say a bit because we are not miles away and we start to see that at certain straights and at certain parts of the race. We know what we must do and we are not too surprised to be where we are."
Renault insists there is no reason why it cannot catch up with Mercedes under the current regulations and believes the law of diminishing returns will curb its rivals' progress in the coming years.
Despite winning three races with Red Bull last year, Renault got life under the new V6 turbo regulations off to a slow start with a significant power deficit to Mercedes. Such was the difference that Red Bull has called for changes to the engine regulations since, but Renault insists it will catch up over time.
"I would never say that we need to change the regulations in order to be assisted to catch up," Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said. "I think we believe there is absolutely no reason why we could not catch up. I guess the question is just when and the amount of time needed to catch up.
"At some point at time the law of diminishing returns will kick in and it will kick in for Mercedes first and then Ferrari. This law will help us in catching them, although I'm not saying we are waiting for them to be limited. But clearly we are behind and need to develop faster and that will be supported by this law. That will happen, we have to be a bit patient but also we have to build a plan so that this delay and period that is difficult for the Red Bull-Renault group is as short as possible."
However, the rules are set so that development of the power unit is further restricted each year as parts become frozen by the regulations. By the end of 2017 35% of components will be frozen and by the end of 2018 95% of the power unit will be set in stone from a performance point of view. Abiteboul says the next two years will be crucial for the long-term success of the Renault power unit, although he believes the main limiting factor could be the French manufacturer's budget.
"Clearly one thing we need for the next two years is to really have the right strategy and perfect alignment with all entities that are involved to make sure we make the best possible use of the tokens we have available. This season we have some tokens remaining and more than any other engine manufacturer, so we need to make very good use of that and next year there will be quite a lot [of tokens to spend].
"We pretty much have a completely new engine [this year] and we only used 20 tokens, so you can do quite a lot of changes with the tokens we have and we may actually be more limited by funding than by tokens because it's quite expensive to use those tokens. The one thing that where we need to be very careful is that there is no guarantee that you get performance improvement when you use a token and that's why you have to use it extremely wisely.
"It's not a race of token usage and from my perspective and the next discussion we must have [at Renault] is that the objective is not to consume tokens but to improve lap time. That's why we need to stay calm, not overreact and build a plan not just for this year but next year and also 2017. It's not the job of one winter to cover the type of deficit we have [to Mercedes]."
Speaking in Malaysia, Abiteboul said there was still a lot of performance to be unlocked from this year's power unit.
"We had better driveability, that's for sure, but in two weeks [between Australia and Malaysia] we could not address 100% of the problem, I would say we have addressed 60% and it is already making a big difference. There is more to come on the driveability side and now we really need to put all of that behind us and focus on what is really missing which is a bit of power. I say a bit because we are not miles away and we start to see that at certain straights and at certain parts of the race. We know what we must do and we are not too surprised to be where we are."