Renault pleased with first race with RBR

Red Bull have switched from Ferrari to Renault engines this season, in the first year the French marque are supplying customer power units since they returned to Formula One in 2001.

Although the first race of their partnership with Red Bull ended with Mark Webber down in 13th position and with David Coulthard out of the race, Renault's principal engineer for Red Bull Fabrice Lom was pleased with how things worked out.

The Frenchman reckons, however, there is still room for improvement.

"Our first race went pretty well overall," said Lom on Renault's website. "Mark's (Webber) qualifying position was a good starting point, and the end result was very encouraging.

"The race showed us that we still have some way to go in terms of overall reliability, because although both cars could have made it to the finish, they weren't able to run the whole race at peak performance.

"We had some minor issues that restricted our pace, which was disappointing. But the relationship with Red Bull Racing is still very new, and our working methods are not yet instinctive.

"We are putting things in place step by step though, and there is good will to make it work on both sides. And that's an encouraging situation."

Lom believes Red Bull could be more competitive at the Malaysian Grand Prix this weekend after making progress during last week's test at Sepang.

"I think we are feeling pretty confident, both for the chassis and engine," he added. "The test last week was very productive, and even though it's only testing, we hope to see a good level of performance, particularly over a single lap, and that should give us a good platform for the race.

"The team is working hard to achieve that objective. In terms of the engine itself, the data we collected last week was promising, and we don't have any particular worries for the second race of the season.

"Everything has gone well so far - so we need to make sure it carries on like that."