Why Renault is deliberately making its life hard

Renault Formula 1 chief Cyril Abiteboul makes no secret of the fact that he is about to enter some incredibly choppy political waters.

From the moment he gave the nod for the French manufacturer to supply engines to McLaren as well as Red Bull, he knew the situation he was creating.

Having lived through some fraught times on the receiving end of relentless bashing from Red Bull, he is not pretending that things are going to get any easier now that Woking has joined the party. In fact, it could get worse.

Beyond opening up a very public benchmark for the Renault chassis by having both Red Bull and McLaren running the same engines, Abiteboul is almost certain to find himself stuck in the middle of what may well be some tense political games between his two ultra-competitive customer teams as they vie to come out on top.

If you thought things were taken to the edge by Franz Tost's complaints last year in Brazil, where he all-but accused Renault of trying to sabotage Toro Rosso's constructors' championship position, Abiteboul is bracing himself for potentially even worse.

"First and foremost I am sure I will ask myself why are we supplying those two teams," the Frenchman smiled this week about what's coming in 2018, as we discussed what looks set to be one of the big themes of the year.

To view the customer situation as an effective lose-lose situation for Renault and Abiteboul would be wrong though. Instead, the French company knows that if it is to achieve real success in F1 - and that means titles - then it cannot simply aim for the path of least resistance and run away from such potential headaches.

Its position is that exposing itself to fully understanding how good its chassis and team are performing against two brilliant teams will only fast-track its own progress at Enstone.

And having the potential for some politically charged comments from Christian Horner and Zak Brown if its engine falls below expectations could provide the disruption and motivation needed to ensure there is no relaxing on the dyno back at Viry-Chatillon.

The approach of confronting problems to ultimately come out stronger was something that Renault ambassador Alain Prost put to good use during his driving career, and he sees the same opportunity for it being a help for Renault this year too.

"We must be careful that we don't focus on non-important things - or less important things, because everything is important in F1," he tells Autosport.

"What we need to achieve is to understand our progression - where we are compared to the others, and comparing to what we had last year for example.

"Obviously we have a competition and McLaren will be one of the strong competitors as well, but it doesn't make a big difference in a way. If we make a progression, that means we understood where we were going and it will be easier for the future.

"But we are not there yet, so that is what we need to have this year. We are going to see where we are compared to Red Bull and McLaren, and we only must take that as an experience and to get the best of these two teams. Then we will learn also a few things that will give us the progression. We need to see it this way."

Prost isn't worried by having Renault go up against Red Bull and McLaren teams with identical engines. He thinks Renault is not yet well placed enough to consider itself ready to take on the big guns.

"We are giving the same engine to everybody and that should be recognised as a very important thing. So, if we don't do a good enough job then the biggest problem is for us" Alain Prost

"I am sure a lot of people are going to see where we are compared to McLaren, but we don't have the same structure yet: we are still working on the construction, and it is going to be different," he explains.

"On the other side they have more pressure than us. They keep saying that they have the best chassis in F1, and it is also good to see where they are with the same engine. They have the pressure without us: we will have the pressure more and more month after month, and year after year. But today, let's just wait and see."

Having been known to be a bit of a master politician himself, Prost also senses that the real tension may not serve to be as big a distraction for Renault chiefs as some fear - and that it may even not get too involved in some pretty intense crossfire between Red Bull and McLaren.

"Again we must think about ourselves first," he says. "There will be a fight - but the biggest fight will be between McLaren and Red Bull. That is for sure. We don't want to be distracted by that.

"We know that if we have a problem both of them are going to be tough! But we will have more possibilities to compare, and it is going to be different. At the end of the day, what we want is to have the best engine possible.

"Very often in the past, some criticisms were correct, but it was much too much, or too strong. And very often they were not correct at all. At the end you want to accept some very straight criticisms because we had some, but very often it was not the case and it was not easy to accept.

"We know they are competitors, we know they are strong teams. Even McLaren is not going to be that easy, but we know where we are going and we cannot accept this kind of criticism without doing things.

"We are giving the same engine to everybody and that should be recognised by a team like them as a very important thing. So, if we don't do a good enough job then the biggest problem is for us."

Abiteboul knows all this, and accepts the extra pressure and stress that is going to come his way in 2018. But it will be through dealing with the dark days - whether it is questions over why his team is lagging behind the customers or getting a bashing over why Ferrari and Mercedes are still ahead - that will help Renault plot a path to better days in 2019 and beyond.

"You cannot allow yourself to think short-term when you are leading such a project - which is a very ambitious project," he says. "You can only think medium- to long-term.

"We have that roadmap of six years and we know that in order to be there in 2020 or 2021, we need to manage expectations and the pressure of time. But at the same time, if I don't focus on my long-term plan, and accept to make some short-term compromises, I will never get there. So, we know the reason we have been doing what we have been doing with Red Bull and McLaren."

Abiteboul also sees good coming from having the added challenge of McLaren on board.

"Tactically and strategically we are learning from those two teams, so for me Red Bull is the best in class organisation in terms of aero development and vehicle dynamics.

"McLaren is different, they are a car maker and they understand what building a car means. They understand engines, they understand the issues and the question of engine and gearbox optimisation for example.

"We are discussing some topics with McLaren that we have never discussed in 12 years of partnership with Red Bull, simply because their ethos is very different as an organisation. So just as we have learned by working with Red Bull, we will learn by working with McLaren."