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Renault agrees to more aggressive 2016 chassis push
Renault chiefs have given the green light for a more aggressive 2016 development push for the works Formula 1 team, after admitting there are no excuses for its poor start to the year.
Jonathan Noble
Edited: Apr 27, 2016, 2:18 PM
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Following a high profile takeover of Lotus over the winter, the resurrected Renault outfit has yet to score a point following a combination of incidents, lack of pace and reliability problems in the first three races.
And although Renault had originally been clear that its main focus was in ensuring the team was fully prepared for 2017, F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul says that a decision has been taken to deliver improvements this year already.
"We've talked about that internally and we have made a decision not to write off 2016," Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.
"We still need to be reasonable with 2017, because it represents a big challenge in particular for a team of our size, because we are not the type of organisation that can split equally resources on two cars and two projects without having one suffering. So we need to be realistic.
"But from a motivation perspective, from a PR perspective, from also a loyalty to Renault and current sponsors, and to test our ability to make progress and to understand ourselves better, we have decided to be a bit more aggressive on 2016 than some people may have alluded to.
"We would like and we intend to be judged on the development that we are doing in 2016."
No excuses
Although the team was braced for a difficult start to the season, on the back of Lotus' tough financial situation stopping development, Abiteboul says that it has still fallen short of what should have been delivered.
"It is a pain for everyone," said Abiteboul about the difficult start to 2016. "We are chasing our baseline and it is not totally clear where we are.
"We have not had a clean weekend for either Jolyon [Palmer] or Kevin [Magnussen]. That is not satisfying, and there is nothing that can justify that.
"Okay we made a late decision, okay we had limited development time and I can accept the limited development over the winter – but in my opinion I can see no excuse for the sort of reliability issues that we have had at least on two occasions.
"And I see no excuse for lack of development in the season, because there is no financial trouble any more. We are offering long term stability to the people, so we will take no excuses, frankly."
He added: "I accept we have to find our feet and put in place a management structure and so on and so forth. But that should not be a distraction from what we have to do, which is clearly to do a better job on the chassis side."
Factory lift
Abiteboul also accepts that if Renault discovers the facilities and infrastructure at its Enstone base are not up to the standard it hoped for, then it must be open to invest in improvement.
"You are never happy with what you have, but as part of the management team we are trying to understand if what we get is at an acceptable level or not," he said.
"If I look at what happened on the engine side, when I came back to the engine factory after a year and a half at Caterham, I was not sure what we had been doing and what was not working.
"It takes a bit of time to understand the structure, understand the people and understand what is holding back the company from being able to deliver. It takes time to do that analysis and make that decision.
"I think the equivalent will have to be done on the chassis side, and we will have to understand if what we are delivering is normal under the circumstances, or less than normal. And in such a case we will have to adjust the way we are operating."
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