Renault pick up praise for their 2020 F1 engine from McLaren
F1 News
Renault struggled in a lot of departments last year. But even before winter testing has started, they've picked up praise from McLaren for an engine which they feel has moved forwards over the winter break. McLaren enter their final year with a Renault engine before moving back to Mercedes in 2021.
In 2019, the Renault engine was the only one not to record a victory. Mercedes, Honda and Ferrari all crossed the line in first place at some point in the season, while wins were blank for the French engine manufacturer. With the help of a rather chaotic Brazilian Grand Prix, McLaren's Carlos Sainz stepped on the third step of the podium.
One of the first things that new-born team boss Andreas Seidl did was tear up the contract with Renault. But they've found some gains during the winter break according to James Key.
In 2020 the team from Woking still has to make do with the French power source and tries to keep the relationship as good as possible. “I think the competitiveness - although we saw the Ferrari steal a bit of a march - the competitiveness of the Renault engine was pretty good last year and very much in the mix with Mercedes, and Honda weren’t so far away either," McLaren's technical director told Crash.net.
"I think one of the positives from last year is Renault made a very visible step forward, data and straight-line speed and so on, and that was definitely part of how the team improved last year. We’ll see how we go now going into this next year, but the times when PU were vastly different, which wasn’t that long ago, pretty much disappeared last year.”