Rivals dismiss Renault's engine suspicions

Renault boss Flavio Briatore and lead driver Fernando Alonso both believe their team have lost out because they have not put any effort into improving the few bits of an engine that can still be worked on.

Briatore told Gazzetta dello Sport this week: "Renault have stuck to the letter of the current regulations on frozen engines, and we've been buggered: others didn't do that and are far ahead, while we suffer. It's not fair."

And Alonso added in Hungary this weekend that the Mercedes-Benz engine he used at McLaren last year had definitely improved over the course of the year.

"When the engine was frozen two or three years ago I think Renault more or less stopped developing and carried on with the new regulations," said the Spaniard.

"At the Viry factory in Paris there are less people working and just the maintenance of the engine. Build the engine and nothing more than that, no research and no developing.

"I was in another team last year and I know how much they improved the engine during the season and how many steps we introduced and it is the same for all the teams. Every three or four races there is a little step in the engine, which gives you some horsepower.

"For Renault, it has not been like that for the last two years. There has been a lack of power probably in the last three years."

But Renault's rivals have denied doing anything outside of what is allowed under the terms of the current engine freeze.

"We have gained some performance on the engine side but always outside the boundaries (of what can't be changed)," Theissen told autosport.com.

"These boundaries have been tightened last year, so since then we have only been working on exhausts, on the air inlet above the filter and on oil and fuel. But there are no big steps any more because we have been developing oil and fuel for a long time."

Ferrari technical director Aldo Costa said about Renault's claims: "You have to listen to their opinion, but you also have to listen to the opinion of all the other competitors.

"Rules are frozen on the engine but you are allowed to change components for reliability reasons and also, if you demonstrate that you are implementing a more economic, a cheaper component, you can also ask permission.

"The information gets circulated and all the teams have to express an opinion. So if they want to say no, they say no. And having listened to all the competitors, the FIA can decide not to allow these modifications. So I think it's a very good process. There are very clear limitations and very clear possibilities."

Toyota's Pascal Vasselon added: "From the Toyota side, we have obviously had the same approach as Renault: that means more legal than legal. It was an engine freeze, our engine has been frozen."