Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Taffin wants fight with Red Bull

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Remi Taffin says he wants to be fighting with Red Bull for victories in the future as it will mean Renault has a strong power unit.

Renault has struggled so far in the V6 era, taking just three victories in the last two seasons as Mercedes has dominated. The difficulties put a strain on the relationship with Red Bull to the extent the team will use Tag Heuer branded Renault power units in 2016.

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Taffin is the engine technical director at Renault Sport Racing and as a result is aiming to help the returning works team win again in future. However, when asked about comments from Helmut Marko that Renault should prioritise Red Bull over its own team, Taffin said he expects such a competitive stance from the four-time constructors' champions.

"If I were Dr Marko, that’s exactly what I would say," Taffin said. "Because he has his team and he wants the best for his team and he wants to win. Actually I would have been surprised if he had said the opposite. But this is my own judgment.

"As we want to make Renault win, at one point, we’ll have to have a very good engine and if that engine is still fitted into the [Red Bull] chassis, for sure they will have a competitive package. Because we know how capable they are of producing good chassis.

"That’d make a good battle. I’d be happy to get a fight with Red Bull, eventually winning obviously."

While Red Bull will receive the same power unit as Renault, Cyril Abiteboul warned there could be stages of the season where the two teams are "out of sync" with each other.

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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.