Troubled start to 2015 F1 season 'killed' Renault, says Remi Taffin

The French firm made sweeping changes to its power unit, particularly its hardware, over the 2014-15 winter in a bid to make up ground on Mercedes and Ferrari.

But Red Bull suffered poor drivability in pre-season testing and the early races and as Taffin previously admitted, it took Renault too long to identify the problems.

In tandem, Renault was considering its future in F1 while its relationship with Red Bull became strained as performance and reliability took a dip.

"The start of '15 just killed us," Taffin told Autosport. "We just stopped everything.

"Technically it was difficult, politically it was difficult.

"We did not know if we were going to buy a team or not, if we were going to have customers.

"If you put everything into one piece it makes life very hard for everyone.

"In the second part of '15 we showed that we could survive but also do a good job again."

Renault has since turned things around, winning two races with Red Bull in 2016, but Taffin admitted the firm lost direction when things were not going so well.

"People have not changed, we still have the right and good people," he said.

"It's just a matter of organising. That's what we lost at that point.

"At some point we did not find the right technology which we eventually got on top of, but I guess we missed one year.

"This year should have been last year."

After regrouping and rebuilding, Taffin now feels Renault is in a better position to deal with any potential problems it may encounter in the future.

"In some regions of the engine we have put a procedure in place to make sure now that everything we do back in the factory will be alright on the track," he said.

"It's fair to say that we had, let's say, one or two surprises this year.

"This is normal but at least we could react and we were ready for that.

"Not only do you need to validate everything, you need to be ready and have a solution when it's going wrong or different to how you expect."