Newey praises Renault progress in closing Mercedes gap

Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey has praised the "really good progress" Renault has made in closing the gap to Mercedes this season.

Renault struggled at the start of 2015, with the French manufacturer suffering from poor reliability as well as a lack of performance. The difficult spell led to a breakdown in the relationship between Red Bull and Renault, with the former looking elsewhere for its power unit supply for a spell amid quit threats.

The pair remained partners for 2016 - although the Renault power units are branded Tag Heuer - and clear progress has been made which resulted in Max Verstappen winning in Barcelona and Daniel Ricciardo taking pole position in Monaco.

Newey says Red Bull's strong form has been helped by a clear development direction from Renault which he believes is seeing it cut the gap to Mercedes.

"It’s obviously good to have won a race again this year," Newey said. "Monaco was frustrating because we mucked that up ourselves, but to be back running at least somewhere near the front is a reward to not only all the hard work that’s gone on at Red Bull, but also all the hard work Renault has put in over the last 12 months.

"I think it’s fairly well recorded that at the start of last season there was a frustrating time when Renault if anything, frankly, were going backwards rather than forwards, but they seem to have really gone away, understood their problems and made really good progress over the last winter and again with the upgrade that we had for Monaco.

"If they can keep that ramp going then we can really start to close in power unit wise on Mercedes."

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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.