Renault to Push to Improve Engine

Fernando Alonso moved to the top of the World Championship table with a convincing victory in Sepang, following Giancarlo Fisichella's triumph in Australia, as the French car manufacturer marked itself out as early Championship favourites.

But despite the dominance of their early-season form, and the fact that their engines have proved ultra-reliable, Renault's head of engine operations Denis Chevrier is looking for even more improvements over the rest of the season.

"Reliability remains, as it always has been, an over-riding priority, but it is by no means the only parameter by which we judge the engine's success," he said. "We have no room to relax, and will not be lifting off in any area which can further improve our performance."

Speaking about the fact that Renault have enjoyed perfect engine reliability in the first two races of the season, even though a crash forced Giancarlo Fisichella out of the Malaysian race, Chevrier said he was delighted at what had been achieved.

"Without being over confident, it is a source of immense satisfaction to have reached the end of the second race for the RS25, without any incidents throughout the engine life," added Chevrier.

"It is testament to the quality of the work the team has done over the winter, and a great reward for all our efforts in the design office, on the dyno and in testing. We managed our mileage and performance carefully in Melbourne and Malaysia, and this allowed us to complete the race distance without any problems.

"Until you have actually completed the challenge for real, it is hard to be totally confident; it is extremely pleasing to see our predictions confirmed on the track."

And although Chevrier admits that he is not surprised so many of their rivals have enjoyed as strong a reliability as Renault, he is cautious about how much performance some teams have had to cut back to save their engines.

"Already in 2004, the engine manufacturers had to step up to a big reliability challenge, and did so successfully; we have seen the same excellent results this year," he said.

"The question that remains is what performance compromises have been made up and down the grid to achieve this reliability? For Renault, the satisfaction is that our overall compromise has been such that we have had the fastest car on track at the first two races."