Renault’s chief technical officer Bob Bell says he is surprised by the RS16’s performance throughout pre-season testing claiming they may even be able to achieve a top ten finish in Australia.
The season opener in Australia will be Renault’s first race back as a constructor in five years after the French manufacturer took control of Lotus in late 2015.
Because of the late takeover Renault did not have time to design and build their own chassis to house their power unit, instead they were forced to use the chassis Lotus had designed which was originally going to be used with a Mercedes power unit.
Despite the lack of preparation, Renault achieved 776 laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya over the eight days of testing.
When asked about their pre-season, Bob Bell told Autosport: “In fairness, we were surprised, and we are actually in pretty good shape.
“The car has run reliably as we hoped it would. The process of re-engineering a car when the decision is made as late as the one we had is not straightforward. It does have reliability consequences.
“But we’re pleased because it’s come in better than we expected on weight, and the centre of gravity is where we hoped it would be.
“The performance is good from the point of view it’s a consistent handling car, with a solid baseline on which we can build on for the future.”
Bell says he is happy with the overall running and reliability of the car despite not being as quick as some of its rivals.
“Although the car is clearly down on overall headline performance numbers, downforce and probably engine power, it actually runs very well,” he said.
“It’s nicely balanced, consistent, very driveable. It’s a good, useable racing car.
“We didn’t have to spend a lot of time chasing balance and set-up, which was a real blessing, and we are not chasing difficult handling characteristics, or bad driveability in the engine.”
Bell also said the team is confident ahead of Melbourne.
“We go to Melbourne with a lot of confidence we can get up to speed pretty quickly there. If we come away, finish the race credibly, if we sneak into the top 10, we’ll probably be pleased with that.”
