Renault not writing off 2016 F1 season - Abiteboul

Cyril Abiteboul claims Renault will not write off its 2016 F1 campaign to switch focus on to next year, despite a challenging first three races on its return as a fully-fledged team.

The French manufacturer has yet to score any point this year, one of only three outfits - with cash-strapped Sauber and minnows Manor - in such situation.

Since its late takeover of Lotus last December, Renault’s senior management has repeatedly played down early expectations and envisioned the current season as a building block for the planned 2017 technical revolution.

However, Abiteboul says Renault owes it to itself as well as to its partners to be more competitive as early as possible.

"We've talked about that internally and we have made a decision not to write off 2016," he told Motorsport.com.

"We still need to be reasonable with 2017, because it represents a big challenge in particular for a team of our size, because we are not the type of organisation that can split equally resources on two cars and two projects without having one suffering. So we need to be realistic.

"But from a motivation perspective, from a PR perspective, from also a loyalty to Renault and current sponsors, and to test our ability to make progress and to understand ourselves better, we have decided to be a bit more aggressive on 2016 than some people may have alluded to.

"We would like and we intend to be judged on the development that we are doing in 2016."

Renault’s power unit troubles in the 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged era were well publicised amidst growing tensions with Red Bull. The French constructor seems to have turned a corner in that area though, as highlighted by its customer team’s return to form. Abiteboul explains that chassis development now has to follow suit.

“I accept we have to find our feet and put in place a management structure and so on and so forth. But that should not be a distraction from what we have to do, which is clearly to do a better job on the chassis side,” the Renault managing director added.

“We are chasing our baseline and it is not totally clear where we are.”

"And I see no excuse for lack of development in the season, because there is no financial trouble any more. We are offering long term stability to the people, so we will take no excuses, frankly.”

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