Taffin believes Renault has hit its targets with 2019 engine

40

Renault engine technical director Remi Taffin say that this year's power unit has already successfully achieved some very ambitious targets in pre-season testing.

“We have set some high targets for this year, which we hit," Taffin told Motorsport.com at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on the final day of the test.

“I think we hit our targets as far as we can say. We're happy with what we have achieved."

Last year's engine performance was something of a disappointment, and was a factor in Red Bull jumping ship and signing up with Honda after 12 years with the French manufacturer.

Ricciardo hopes Renault leading midfield charge into 2019

But Taffin and the rest of the Renault senior management were confident that they were back on the right path in 2019.

“It was quite similar the last few years, but this year it is again where we are," he said. "Everything we actually developed and measured on the dyno were the same as what we see out on track."

He said it was “a big step” for the team, but also cautioned against getting too excited before the first race of the season in Australia on March 17.

"Obviously it's the same thing, we need to go out on track and see where we will be," he said. "We will have to wait until Melbourne to see that in qualie and the race.”

The team believes that it has overcome the problem with the DRS system that held it back in the first week of testing, which saw Daniel Ricciardo spin on day 2.

"We know we were slow speed trap-wise first week, but particularly seeing as we didn't use DRS much," commented Renault's chassis technical director Nick Chester.

“This week we've been climbing up the speed traps. I think the speeds today were a bit more sensible," he explained. "So I'm not too worried.

"We know where we're running on rear wing, and we know what we're doing with our programme," he added. "We’re reasonably comfortable."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.