Renault's power unit woes have been well publicized this season as the French manufacturer has battled with dismal reliability and a depreciated level of performance compared to its peers.
The dreary state of affairs has led to a rocky relation with Red Bull with the Milton Keynes squad openly holding its engine partner accountable for its poor results this year, although its performance level appears to have improved somewhat lately.
As it undertook to improve its fortunes, Renault prioritized its search for reliability and now seeks to implement a performance increase through the use of its development token allocation, twelve of which remain unused.
Renault F1's director of operations Remi Taffin has not made it clear when the upgrade would occur, but he did confirm the leap forward would be substantial.
“We will try to do as much as we can in one go to do the big step,” Taffin told Motorsport.com. “It is not going to be Spa, I guess, not Monza – maybe it will be Singapore or Russia or the race after. Whether it is Russia or not, it will be to have a proper improvement, something you can clearly see with the lap time."
While Red Bull and Toro Rosso would certainly welcome any meaningful performance increase, expectations remain realistic as it's doubtful Renault's power unit would suddenly be on a par with Mercedes dominant hybrid unit.
“We know where we are, we know where we want to be next season for example, and this step we want to make later in the season is part of the plan to recover. You have to be cautious and organised whether and where and when you want to close that gap."
Click here for F1i's mid-term report on how the Formula One teams have fared so far in 2015
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