Renault believes they will be able to offer more power and improved reliability for the rest of the 2017 season after improvements were found in dyno testing.
This will be welcome news after a lengthy period of poor reliability across the fleet of teams using Renault power, with Max Verstappen and Jolyon Palmer suffering the most in recent races.
An older specification of parts are believed to have been at fault for the recent failures, this has led to a positive outlook from the French manufacturer for when the new parts are implemented into their power units.
“We can affirm that from the Canada to Baku, we touched on the level of reliability that we wanted to have,” Renault’s Remi Taffin told Motorsport.com. “So anything we want to bring into the game now is what we want to have – and has been 5000km prove.
“Obviously we still have to play with the parts that we introduced earlier in the year, so that is why sometimes we still have a few bits and pieces, glitches and gremlins. But that is how we have to work and we have to make sure that we can move on.”
The new parts are expected to arrive at either the British or Hungarian Grands Prix, this is part of the plan from Renault as they plan to stay within the allotted four power units for the season.
Taffin added: “It is all about reliability, which has obviously taken us two months more than we would have liked. But at least now we can benefit from that and in Baku we could get more performance out of the engine, which was good for this kind of track.”
Taffin also believes more performance will come through the 2017 season through their fuel and lubricant supplier BP, as well as software and possible further hardware updates should they prove to be reliable enough to be put into their fleet.
“The second part of the season we will be looking to build on the right level of reliability to take the most out of the engine,” he added. “That also means the most out of the power unit, so we can get more electrical energy out of the energy store and so on and so forth.
“We will see if we can bring some of the [update] stuff forward. We will have some new fuel or lubricants which will help and, if we have some new bits and pieces that we have left aside from the start of the season, we will bring them.
“There is still a big focus in trying to follow our road map and make sure that next year’s engine is there. And as it is an engine that is close to this one, it is easier to transfer ideas from one to the other.”
