Renault’s chassis technical director Nick Chester has said the French manufacturer will use Red Bull as a benchmark to see how much work they need to do on the chassis.
With Red Bull once again using Renault power units this season, Renault will instantly be able to see how far behind they are with their own aero and chassis development.
Renault is expecting the road to success to be a long one. The French team’s chairman Carlos Ghosn has laid out a three-year plan to become regular podium challengers with no timeline set on becoming race winners.
Chester has acknowledged the team does not expect to be ahead of Red Bull so soon and he has welcomed the fact Renault will have nowhere to hide their chassis and aero shortcomings when they come up against Red Bull.
Speaking to Motorsport.com Chester said: “It gives us a chassis benchmark and that might be quite painful, but it is sort of good knowledge.”
“We know Red Bull make a very good chassis. We will know the lap time difference and it will be a target.”
“And, to be honest, we don’t expect to be at their level this year. We need to start improving the team and building towards it.”
Chester accepts the team has a lot of work to do despite taking over a team that performed consistently throughout the 2015 season with a limited budget.
“For this year we are realistic.” he said. “We have got a lot of building up the team to do and we want to be reliable and show we can improve during the year.”
“But we are not setting a championship target, nor a championship position. We just want to do a credible job and start to show that we can improve.”
