Renault engine issues 'not an easy fix'
Renault Sport, engine supplier for both Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso has acknowledged that the 'litany of issues' experienced at Melbourne were unexpected, and that the driveability issues are certainly not an easy fix.
While both teams had reasonable reliabilty during winter testing, Renault approach to push development until the last moment allowed some issues to creep into the racing spec power units, creating disappointment, especially with Red Bull Racing.
Even though Daniel Ricciardo and Carlos Sainz managed to score points at the Australian Grand Prix, Kvyat experienced an engine issue before the start while Verstappen had a gearbox issue following other ICE issues. Already on Friday, Ricciardo saw one of his engine give up, and as it looks now it will be a write-off, leaving him with just 3 engines for the entire 2015 season.
"From the start of the weekend we've faced a number of technical issues, both at Red Bull and Toro Rosso", admits Rémi Taffin, Renault's Director of Operations.
"Reliability has been below par, with Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen suffering ICE problems. The two are not related and we are already investigating a recovery programme to make sure we do not see a repeat. The biggest issue has been the driveability, which has made it hard for all the drivers to feel comfortable in the cars. It affects pedal application and confidence in the corners so has cost lap time and points this weekend. It's related to the maps, or the way the Power Unit is configured, so while it's definitely not an easy fix, it does not require a complete redesign. We have got a lot of work to do before Malaysia but equally a lot of motivation to not repeat the same issues we had this weekend.
Cyril Abiteboul, Managing Director at the French engine supplier acknowledged it has turned out to be an extremely difficult first race of the season.
"The weekend has been very frustrating. We know that we made genuine progress over the winter but we could not show it here and in fact we would even seem to have moved backwards. Given the pace at which we conducted our development programme towards the last few weeks of the winter, there may not be lots to change to be able to access these improvements.
"Now, we need to react, but not overreact, and get back to some basic common sense that has always driven our approach in all these years of F1 engine development. The season will be long, we have the time and the capacity to react and get this very bad start of the 2015 season behind us."
