Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul says the French engine supplier will now switch its focus to unlocking more performance from its power unit now that reliability fixes have proven successful.
Although the highest-ranked Renault-powered driver in Canada was Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat in ninth, Abiteboul was pleased to see both RB11s and both Toro Rosso STR10s finish the race at Montreal.
“The results are nothing to write home about,” said the ex-Caterham team principal. “But there are a number of positives to take away from the weekend. For the third race in a row we have not experienced any reliability worries.”
“Now we have this we can move our attention to performance, working with the teams to get the most from both the engine and chassis. As we have said before, we are playing the long game, so we need to keep our eyes on the future and not get distracted when the results do not come our way, as has been the case this weekend.”
Renault Sport F1 director of operations Rémi Taffin had expected a tough outing at power-hungry Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, but was equally satisfied with the supplied teams’ overall reliability record.
The only blot in Renault's Montreal copybook came from Max Verstappen using a fifth engine (out of the allocated four) and therefore taking a 10-place grid penalty. However, Taffin insists this was a tactical decision, which eventually paid off.
“Even with the increased demands we have had a trouble-free weekend on all cars. We also strategically introduced a fifth unit for Max [Verstappen], which incorporated the latest reliability fixes. The unit behaved as expected and confirmed that the correlation between track and dyno is now working well.
“We have another couple of power sensitive tracks coming up, so now reliability is under control we can prioritise the performance upgrades, without sacrificing consistency or driveability, of course.”
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