Renault answers Red Bull complaints

Renault Sport F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul has reacted to the criticism expressed by Red Bull.

After Daniel Ricciardo's engine failure yesterday, Helmut Marko directed some virulent criticism towards the French manufacturer, infuriated by the lack of performance and reliability of its power unit.

"This isn't an easy weekend and we are clearly not performing at the desired level", acknowledged Abiteboul on French channel Canal+.

"To sum things up, the manner in which the engine repeatedly delivers its output and driveability... it's complicated," he added. "We lacked time on the test bed, as components arrived late because of our aggressive winter development program, and we are paying a bit for this today."

Abiteboul also said that Renault will not be in a position to take advantage of the full potential of its V6 turbo until the Chinese Grand Prix scheduled in mid-April.

"We've given ourselves three races to reach the engine's required level. We do have performance and reliability but we cannot presently fully access them."

Abiteboul also regretted Red Bull openly criticizing its engine partner on the very first race weekend of the season.

"It really doesn't help us work serenely although we must also understand their point of view. They're a successful racing team and want to win, we must therefore also deliver the goods. But we must work towards the future."

"In F1, we should not overreact and we still have twenty races to improve. The bad news is that we've already lost one out of the four engines allocated to Ricciardo's car. But we still have twenty races and twelve upgrade development tokens. And with these tokens will come a big dose of performance during the season."

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