According to Renault’s chief technical officer Rob White, the engine manufacturer is on course to make considerable performance improvements with their 2015 Formula One power unit before the season-opening race in Melbourne, Australia.

Renault have made sweeping comprehensive changes to their F1 power unit over the winter break in an effort to reduce the performance deficit to Mercedes which they experienced during the 2014 F1 season.

Despite reliability issues hampering running in this year’s first pre-season test at Jerez for both the Red Bull and Toro Rosso F1 teams, Renault are certain that we’ll see big leaps forward before before March 15 when F1 returns to Melbourne.

White spoke to F1’s official website saying that, “First and foremost we need to run reliably, be quick and closer to front.

“Our honest expectation is that we will make a decent improvement but it is difficult to quantify the gain relative to our competitors who will also progress.

“What we can say is that we are on course to make a significant performance step and resolve the principal reliability weaknesses by the time we get to the first race.”

According to White, Renault has also opted to use the majority of their engine development tokens prior to the 2015 Australian Grand Prix in order to deliver these big performance gains, but added that the decision making around when Renault will use the remaining tokens for future upgrades during the course of the season, will be “juggling act”.

“We have used the majority of the tokens for the first race and our use of tokens during the course of the season will be relatively modest,” he explained.

“It then becomes a matter of strategy about when you introduce the remaining tokens; whether to introduce at the start of the season when the technology is relatively immature but could give greater relative performance, or later in the season when the part has had more testing miles but the impact on performance will be potentially less.

“Clearly the juggling act we need to perform is which areas of the power unit are the most worthwhile to attack for performance reasons. We have therefore prioritised token spend to make as much headway as possible with performance.”

Photo Credit: Renault Sport F1