Renault brings F1 engine upgrades to Australian Grand Prix

The French manufacturer believes it found half a second per lap with updates it ran during pre-season testing, and it has made further changes to its power unit since the conclusion of running at Barcelona earlier this month.

Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul said: "There is new stuff on the engine, first and foremost, to make it perform a bit better, a bit more power, but also much more reliable.

"Touch wood I hope that is what we see over the weekend."

Recalling the disastrous start to last season, Abiteboul added: "I'm smiling now because last year, after flying to Melbourne I switched on my mobile phone and I saw a text from [Red Bull team principal] Christian Horner.

"He said that after 46 kilometres they had broken an engine.

"That's the sort of thing I don't want to see us reproducing, so reliability is the big, big target for this weekend.

"We will also have the capacity to extract all the performance that is available in the engine, something we were not in a position to do last year for a number of reasons, which were both hardware and software related.

"So there should be more performance to come, and also more reliability."

MINIMAL CHASSIS CHANGES

Chief technical officer Bob Bell has stated the car that will take to the track in Melbourne is essentially the one that ran in testing, although the door is ajar for potential improvements.

"It will be very similar honestly," he told Autosport.

"We always intended we would run the two winter tests with a [chassis] spec which was very close to what we run in Melbourne.

"We are bringing in some development pieces here.

"We may be able to get a new front wing on the car, but we will only bring it when it is properly validated and ready to go.

"We won't rush it. Broadly speaking, the car will be very similar."

Jolyon Palmer, who will make his F1 race debut this weekend, believes the team knows where it needs to improve and has the resources to do so.

"Very little has changed but we have more things coming," he told Autosport.

"There is not a lot of difference from testing, but we know where we can improve and we will be improving in those areas."