Renault thinks turbo improvement key to better F1 performance

Despite a more encouraging showing during the second day of this week's test in Bahrain, with Daniel Ricciardo upbeat about Red Bull's outing, Renault remains cautious about its situation.

Remi Taffin, its head of trackside engineering, has revealed that the main area of attention it now needs to work on is the turbo.

"I think you are going to be surprised," he said. "I am more confident with the ERS than the V6 turbo. We have more to do on the V6 turbo.

"The V6 this year is all to do with the turbo."

Taffin declined to elaborate on exactly which aspect of the turbo design concerned him the most, but he did suggest that improvements were to refine it rather than replace the current specification.

"I am confident with the component we have got," he said. "There could be a few tweaks around, but it is not due to the spirit of the technology that we are going to have a problem.

"It is going to be fixing, not changing the full concept/design of the car."

Taffin said that Renault was continuing to make progress, but confessed that its power units were not yet running at a level that was good enough.

"We are getting there," he said about Ricciardo's performance. "We have some potential - and maybe it was the time to show off a little bit.

"We are still to get the most out of what we have got now. To be completely fair, we still have a lot of work to do and there is plenty to come."