Renault has admitted that it is bracing itself for an
'anxious' weekend in Australia, after failing to complete all that it had hoped
to in last week's final pre-season Formula 1 test.
The French car manufacturer has had a difficult time
ahead of the new campaign, with its partner teams suffering a spate of
reliability and performance problems during the three winter tests.
Although it has made progress in addressing some of its
issues, Renault's deputy managing director Rob White has said that the company
is under no illusions about how tough next week's start to the season will be.
"Melbourne will be an anxious weekend," he
explained. "Conducting a normal race weekend, in which both cars run well
during each session for every team, would be a great relief.
"I hope we can support our teams and drivers to
explore the performance of the car and allow the race to deliver its sporting
verdict."
White's realistic stance for Melbourne comes after
ongoing troubles for Renault's teams in Bahrain that left them struggling with
torque delivery and driveability issues when the power units were running.
"The aim of the last test session before Australia
was to recover some of the lost ground from the previous test sessions and to
rehearse the grand prix," he said.
"We wanted each of our four teams to be able to
approach a normal race weekend without having to improvise any of the
procedures or operations needed.
"We can't escape the fact that we did not complete
the entire programme with all the teams and that some Melbourne preparations
are incomplete.
"On the up-side, we have done some of everything,
with simulations of qualifying sessions, starts, race distances and long stints
and it is fair to say that once again we have made some real progress.
"New problems revealed as we ran more have added to
the unsolved items, and have disrupted running, which is disappointing for our
teams."
White does believe, however, that Renault is now close to
getting its engine running on track at a similar configuration to how it has
performed on its own dynos.
"We have started to converge on a configuration of
car that is more like when we have run the engine back on the dynos in Viry.
"We've increased the level of performance at which
the PU can be operated, and we've made strides in terms of how energy is
managed round the circuit.
"Additionally we have made some headway on
troubleshooting our control systems."
Culled from Autosports
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