Renault says its Jerez problems are now fixed

As AUTOSPORT revealed, Renault had to restrict how hard teams could push its engines in the first pre-season test because of fears over a minor part causing failures.

A redesign of the metallic component will be ready for the next test at Barcelona though, which will allow Red Bull and Toro Rosso a better idea of how much progress Renault has made with its engine.

Renault's director of operations Remi Taffin said: "We want to move more to the performance aspect of the power unit in this [Barcelona] test and run in a specification closer to that we will run in Melbourne, of course still keeping a very close eye on reliability."

He added: "There have been some teething troubles, which have arisen largely because we have been so uncompromising with our aims over the winter.

"The energy store in particular was being run as aggressively as we could, but we need to explore the limits of the parts in Barcelona to know how far we can push them.

"Likewise, a water pump issue was due to a relatively young part we tested on track rather than running extensively in the dyno - we are conscious that we need to pull out all the stops.

"We have learnt a lot from the running and have now put in place measures to prevent any further problems of this nature going forward."

Renault's managing director Cyril Abiteboul said there was no cause for alarm over the Jerez issues - especially as it knew before the test that there would be limitations on what was possible.

"Yes, we have had a couple of problems, but there have not been any nasty surprises," he explained.

"They were largely due to the fact that, taking our inspiration from the F1 teams, we have tried to push every design decision to the last possible moment to gain as much information as we could.

"Necessarily this means we experienced some issues on track. However all the issues are understood - and some were even anticipated - so we haven't suffered any setbacks.

"It's impossible to say where we are relative to the competition as others are running different plans, tyre specs, fuel loads, and even to a certain extent car specs etc. but our own performance level is where we expected.

"We have measured it very precisely in the dyno and it matches what we see on track. However just as the cars will be changed in Melbourne, our power unit will also be very different in a month."