Why Renault is creating fresh doubts for Red Bull

Renault has an awesome responsibility in 2018. Not because it's the key to McLaren's revival, not because its works team should take another step towards the front, but because it holds the key to what every Formula 1 fan wants to see - a fight for the title featuring more than two teams, and hopefully involving Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo.

On previous form, though, it won't deliver. In the 1.6-litre V6 hybrid F1 era, Renault's engine packages have consistently disappointed. Its seven wins, all with Red Bull, have come mostly when Mercedes and Ferrari have hit trouble, and things haven't started too promisingly this year either.

The Renault power unit package is apparently all about reliability for the start of this year. That means no big hike in performance and the odds of Red Bull joining Ferrari and Mercedes in the title fight lengthening.

"Last year we have made an enormous improvement on performance, which has been overshadowed by our reliability level," says Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul. "Firstly, because we've suffered a number of failures which have been detrimental for the overall performance of our team, but also simply due to the fact that we had to massively, in certain cases, turn down the performance for the sake of protecting the engine.

"Between that and the sporting regulations, we had to review our strategy and we've decided to focus massively on reliability. But reliability means also being in a position to take full and complete advantage of the performance potential of the engine. That's the starting point, and we also know we are doing that with the knowledge and the confidence that we have in the pipeline of innovation a number of developments that will bring performance to the engine."

So the engine package in use at the start of this season is similar to the one in the car at the end of last season. It's not without some minor gains, so it would be wrong to say Renault has stood still, but it is not a giant stride.

Using the works Renault as a case in point, the packing under the surface has changed significantly and that's partly been facilitated by some tweaks to the power unit package. Presumably, Red Bull with its tight sidepods has been helped by the same thing.

"It's a step forward," says Renault chassis technical director Nick Chester. "The packaging is a bit better for us and there's a little more power.

"It's an evolution of what we finished the year with, so there's a few things that are going to help us performance wise. But the biggest thing was making sure we could run a season on three engines, so they've worked very hard over the winter."

That performance gain is marginal, particularly given Ferrari and, in particular, Mercedes will also have gained over the winter. In Abu Dhabi last year, the Renault power units were sacrificing about three-tenths of performance in the name of reliability that should now be available. That plus a sundry tenth probably adds up to the performance gain Chester refers to.

Given this is an engine that's perhaps 40-50bhp down, that's not going to be enough. Doubly so given that the pursuit of reliability means the testing engine modes are conservative.

Reliability is all well and good, but if you're having to be conservative to avoid problems that is inhibiting performance and preventing performance from being exploited. On paper, the Renault package, meaning both internal combustion engine and ERS package, genuinely does have very good performance potential. In reality, be it on the dyno or track, it's not accessible without the reliability falling away.

Late last year, Renault started to phase in its G-spec V6 engine, which featured improved combustion chamber technology. This went well, and what might be termed the 'conventional' side of the game is at least close to where Mercedes and Ferrari are. But the potential for disparity in ERS performance is greater. This is where Renault's main problems lie, this is where its theoretical performance is hidden and this is at the centre of its plans for a conservative start to this season.

"It's coming. I don't want to say too much now, but we have an important development in-season that should change the energy recovery related elements" Cyril Abiteboul on Renault's new MGU-K

At the heart of the problem is the MGU-K. The first-generation Renault MGU-K was produced in association with Italian company Magneti Marelli. Renault decided to go it alone for the second generation, which was supposed to be introduced at the start of last season. It was postponed because of reliability problems, and it remains postponed.

Abiteboul won't be drawn on when this will be ready to race, and that's maybe because he doesn't yet know. But Renault is certainly hoping to introduce that specification during this season. The first window of opportunity will be whenever the scheduled second power units come on stream for the Renault teams, but he won't commit to a timescale for the arrival of a part that, when it has run in testing, has not been reliable.

"That's coming," he says of the new MGU-K. "I don't want to say too much at this point in time, but we have quite an important development programme in-season that should see the change of energy recovery related elements.

"The second generation of ERS is still a little bit in gestation, towards the end of gestation but still in gestation. It is really much more developed and built by Renault Sport. It's taking a bit more time than we were initially planning because we were originally planning to start using that MGU-K in the course of last season.

"It has been postponed and is now part of a much more complete and exhaustive package that could come at some point over the course of the season. But before imposing on ourselves some targets, I want to see where we stand in terms of reliability with that configuration, and also where we stand in terms of competitiveness. We will only establish the priorities for this season based on what we experience in the course of these two tests."

Red Bull desperately needs Renault to be up to task. If not, it might well have a title-winning car that can't fight for the championship

The MGU-K is at the heart of everything the ERS does. It harvests energy under braking and deploys the electrical power, so faces a very demanding duty cycle. If the second-generation design is unreliable, that limits the whole ERS package. And Renault already had problems with turbo and MGU-H cooling last year. But if this ERS upgrade is as good as Abiteboul hints and does the job, then it could be a gamechanger.

The concern is that Renault is caught in the same spiral it has been in, on and off, throughout this era of engine regulations - with a power unit package that can't simultaneously deliver the necessary performance and reliability.

Which is where Red Bull comes in. The RB14 looks very well-poised on track, the drivers seem to like it and it's understood that the windtunnel figures are very strong. It has more downforce than last year's car and the drivers are happy with the way the chassis, with its narrow sidepods, is performing on track.

If, and it's still too early to be certain, Red Bull has the chassis to take on Mercedes and Ferrari, it desperately needs the Renault engine package to be up to the task. If not, unlike last year when Red Bull did have chassis problems at the start of the year, it might well now have a title-winning car that can't fight for the championship.

There's another dimension complicating this equation. The Red Bull and Renault relationship has been shaky for some time, and there is a clock running on deciding whether it will continue into 2019. But, realistically, a lot depends on the progress Honda makes. It has made a solid start with Toro Rosso and there are signs the team and manufacturer are working together more effectively than in the McLaren era, but what Red Bull needs to see now is a strong development rate before it can seriously contemplate making a switch. The Renault is unquestionably the package to have right now out of those two.

It's also likely Renault has been distracted by the challenge of scaling up its Enstone chassis base as its works team climbs the grid with the intention of becoming a world championship winner in the future. And with Enstone expected to grow to around 700 people by the end of the year, this is a big investment. And there's plenty of evidence that this is a team making genuine progress towards the front.

It also means Renault needs its engines to be there a few years down the line, and raises a legitimate question about how bothered it is about letting Red Bull fight for a title right now. Politics always comes into play, and strategically you could argue compellingly it's completely correct for Renault to work towards its factory team thriving in a couple of years rather than a customer team excelling now.

There are different objectives at play here, and you could say that Red Bull is as right to demand an engine that can challenge for the title now as Renault would be to focus on the grand project of its works team. It's not that it's withholding performance, it's simply a question of priorities. Red Bull is, after all, a customer team and shares that status with newcomer McLaren that doesn't have the same history of difficulties with Renault in the V6 hybrid era.

But the key question is this: can Renault get its MGU-K, and therefore its wider ERS package, to work reliably and without sacrificing performance? This is a question that Renault itself either doesn't know the answer to, or is being very coy about. And if it was close to being ready, surely the new MGU-K would be in use in testing now?

However you spin it, this is a part that has been postponed for a year now and has to be considered a problem. And on top of that, Renault has not been as effective as Mercedes and Ferrari in terms of pushing the limits of the regulations over the past few years, so does it have the same performance potential as its rivals even if all does go well on development?

That's the big concern for all those hoping for a Red Bull-Renault title assault. Red Bull can probably afford to make a decent start to the season, bank points, then push on if and when the new ERS package is ready (and if it proves to be good enough), but for that to work it needs to happen quickly. And even then, it will be playing catch up.

And even if, as Renault hopes, the combination of the regulations requiring power units to last even longer and further restrictions on burning oil pulls back the 'magic' engine modes of Mercedes deployed in qualifying, there's still going to be a deficit to make up. Focusing on making the package reliable isn't necessarily a bad thing, but what will decide if things are going well or badly for Renault this year will be the steepness of the upward curve of performance built upon that foundation.

On the balance of probability right now, you'd have to say that it all might come together too late in 2018 on the power unit side to make that a possibility - even if this path makes sense for Renault in the longer term. And while it would be wrong to say Renault hasn't taken a step this year, it's not yet big enough. The Red Bull chassis would therefore need to be significantly superior to those of Ferrari and Mercedes to make up the deficit, which is a very big ask - especially given how good both Mercedes and Ferrari are.

That is potentially bad news for Red Bull's title hopes for 2018, especially if its car is as good as suspected, and would create a sad state of affairs for Formula 1 too.