If you’re a Red Bull Racing fan or a Toro Rosso fan, you probably really, really didn’t want to read this title. Truth is, Renault dropped the ball big time.
This isn’t even about what Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner said when he used the term “mess” to describe their engine supplier’s current struggles. In Australia it got so bad that Ricciardo finished a lapped 6th while teammate Daniil Kvyat couldn’t even get going.
And of course there was the power unit failure which led to Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen having to retire from the race.
However, according to Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul, a race-winning engine isn’t something that’s going to happen this year. He was also quoted by Autosport saying that “What we have done is shortcut and bypass the important steps in engine development. That means some of the stuff you should be doing on the dyno, you end up doing on the track,” only to later add that “That’s not really the way forward, but it is a good learning for everyone who was pushing for this strategy.”
Wow. Really? The downright disastrous result of skipping important steps in engine development is just a learning experience? How about sacking every single person who was in favor of this strategy? How about doing that?
Still, so much for Red Bull hoping to compete with the likes of Williams and Ferrari again this year. Heck, they might not even keep up with Sauber and Lotus. As for challenging Mercedes? As of right now, that sounds more like a bad joke.