Cyril Abiteboul admits ‘there is no excuse’ for Renault after the French manufacturer failed to score any points across the opening three races of the 2016 F1 season.
While Jolyon Palmer and Kevin Magnussen finished on the cusp of the top 10 in Australia and Bahrain, the duo experienced a torrid Chinese Grand Prix where the Dane claimed a lowly 17th with his British team-mate suffering his “worst race weekend ever” to cross the line in last position.
Returning as a fully-fledged team this year, Renault had little time to prepare following its late takeover of Lotus last December. But Abiteboul refuses to use the rushed off-season to explain his team’s poor start, calling the Shanghai performance “a disaster”.
"We can say that,” the managing director told Autosport. “Let's not be shy, it's not good.
"It was a bad race, a bad weekend. It's absolutely not the sort of performance we want to demonstrate on Sundays.
"Right now we need to focus on the car and there is no excuse to find.
"OK, the best line is because we started late and it's a car that was designed for a Mercedes engine, but that is absolutely no excuse for the lack of progress from that point onwards.
"We cannot be complacent about the fact we are just happy to be here, that we have a lot of excuses because we came late into this. No! No excuse.
"We have no excuse for what we did on the engine, and today we have no excuse for what we're doing on the chassis. So let's look forward."
According to Abiteboul, part of Renault’s problems stem from its struggles to extract the most performance out of the Pirelli compounds.
"For us, a lot [of the issues] are in the region of tyres," he added.
"We need to improve our understanding of the tyres. I'm seeing that when we don't get any running on Fridays, it's hurting us a lot on Sundays. We saw that in China.
"It didn't start well on Friday [Magnussen suffered a suspension failure in FP1 and had to sit out the whole of the day’s remaining time] which prevented us from having a clear understanding of the tyre, and that's really what caused us lots of trouble there."
Scene at the Chinese Grand Prix
Chinese Grand Prix - Quotes of the week
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has made it clear: Formula 1 must rediscover the…
Sergio Perez isn’t taking lightly the suggestion that his return to Formula 1 with Cadillac…
While Aston Martin’s F1 car is currently giving Fernando Alonso some massive engine vibrations and…
For a driver who has spent years bending F1 to his will, Max Verstappen suddenly…
For Carlos Sainz, what was meant to be a strong second season at Williams is…
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso has delivered another withering verdict on Formula 1’s 2026 regulations…