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From GMM
Renault Sport F1 on Friday played down the seriousness of its early season engine crisis.
Addressing publications on Friday, Renault's engineering chief Remi Taffin said the speculation about the French marque's problems is overblown.
"The problems are worse from the outside than they are from the inside," he said.
"It's a difficult moment but we will get through this."
It was believed Renault had come some way in fixing the problems struck at Jerez, when Lotus debuted its new E22 without trouble just a week ago.
But it subsequently emerged that a 'filming' day at Misano for the similarly Renault-powered Toro Rosso did not go so well.
Taffin said the Toro Rosso issues were "not a surprise -- we knew what we had in the car and we thought we would get away with it, but obviously not".
The Frenchman said the major problem at Jerez was hardware and software, and that he is confident Renault will arrive for next week's testing in Bahrain "without all these issues".
Still, there is no guarantee, as he said Renault is still working on the software problems.
"We are trying to do everything at the same time, but then sometimes we have to prioritize so it's not easy to have everything altogether at once," said Taffin.
While admitting Renault is obviously behind schedule, he denied it will take "months" to catch up, insisting all the actual parts of the power unit are sound.
"We are at least where we would have sought to be for the first test, so maybe now we are three weeks behind, and now we are on a recovery plan," said Taffin.
Renault Sport F1 on Friday played down the seriousness of its early season engine crisis.
Addressing publications on Friday, Renault's engineering chief Remi Taffin said the speculation about the French marque's problems is overblown.
"The problems are worse from the outside than they are from the inside," he said.
"It's a difficult moment but we will get through this."
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| Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull Racing, Jerez (Photo: WRI2) |
It was believed Renault had come some way in fixing the problems struck at Jerez, when Lotus debuted its new E22 without trouble just a week ago.
But it subsequently emerged that a 'filming' day at Misano for the similarly Renault-powered Toro Rosso did not go so well.
Taffin said the Toro Rosso issues were "not a surprise -- we knew what we had in the car and we thought we would get away with it, but obviously not".
The Frenchman said the major problem at Jerez was hardware and software, and that he is confident Renault will arrive for next week's testing in Bahrain "without all these issues".
Still, there is no guarantee, as he said Renault is still working on the software problems.
"We are trying to do everything at the same time, but then sometimes we have to prioritize so it's not easy to have everything altogether at once," said Taffin.
While admitting Renault is obviously behind schedule, he denied it will take "months" to catch up, insisting all the actual parts of the power unit are sound.
"We are at least where we would have sought to be for the first test, so maybe now we are three weeks behind, and now we are on a recovery plan," said Taffin.