Last week Red Bull F1 team owner Dietrich Mateschitz threatened to quit the sport if the team couldn’t be provided with a competitive engine from their suppliers Renault, following this at the Chinese Grand Prix, Christian Horner, who over saw the teams four consecutive constructors championships and four drivers world championships with Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013 said he believes the threat was made to urge the French manufactures to improve their engine.
“If you look carefully at his comments, he is encouraging Renault to step up and do the job properly.” Explained Horner
The Milton Keynes based team suffered from another disappointing weekend in China after young Russian Danil Kvyat retired with what seemed to be an engine failure in the back of the Red Bull car and Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo finished in a disappointing ninth after he expressed he felt his team had the third fastest car at the Chinese GP weekend.
Following this Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul said that Renault share Red Bulls “Frustration” at the disappointing results and performance of the car.
“There is no issue with Red Bull, in the sense that they are a team that wants to be extremely successful. They are impatient to be back in a winning position, as we were two years ago. So we understand that, and their frustration. We are a supplier but we are also racers and also extremely frustrated. It is about supporting each other, not dragging each other down, but we want to deal with it together.” Explained the French man.
The Renault engine has seemed to be lacking in both areas of power and reliability and looks to be massively uncompetitive when put up against the rival Mercedes and Ferrari engines.
“There are a lot of talented people in Viry,” Horner said. “They have a great heritage and they are better than what we are seeing. It’s a question of how you respond to the situation you’re in.”
The Red Bull team boss then went on to discuss the difference Ferrari had made from being off the pace in 2014 to becoming competitive against the dominant Mercedes car’s in 2015, he seemed to use this as an example of what is possible when developing an engine.
“It’s a long season but hopefully at the end we will look back and say this is a low point but we recovered that situation, Ferrari in six months since Abu Dhabi have done a super job so it demonstrates what is possible in a relatively short period of time.”
