'Collaboration with Ilmor useful' says Renault's Taffin

Director of Operations for Renault Sport F1, Remi Taffin, says that the French manufacturer's collaboration work with Ilmor Engineering has been productive and will continue in 2016.

As it faced a trying and incredibly difficult 2015 season marked by recurring performance and reliability issues associated with its V6 hybrid power unit, Renault sought input from Mario Illien's company in order to help fast-track its progress.

"They were able to bring different concepts to the table, such as a different combustion concept, and now we will continue with them into 2016," Taffin explained.

" We will continue to develop a lot in-house but with partners such as Ilmor we have a greater bandwidth and a richer experience and expertise.

"We did not see the full extent of the collaboration in 2015 for various reasons, but now they are under our control and we have a clearer direction we should see this more in 2016 and beyond."

On the subject of next season which will see Renault return to the fray as a works team following its ongoing buy-out of Lotus, Taffin insisted the manufacturer's engine department had learnt from its past mistakes and would begin its 2016 campaign much better prepared than previously.

"In December, the 2016 PU we will use in Melbourne will be running in the dyno and doing endurance testing, mapping and calibration so at the end of January we can go to winter testing without any issues.

"The spec for the first race has been fixed and seems to be generally reliable, as it has run several thousands of kilometres in the dynos.

"Naturally there are some details to sort, as can be expected, but this is really only refining and we are in much better shape now than we were at this point last year, for sure."

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