Whilst Renault’s power unit enjoyed its best day yet, having completed just over 200 laps in the back of its customers cars, Kamui Kobayashi says it’s unable to compete with Ferrari and Mercedes’ units.
The Caterham driver was the fastest of the Renault powered cars, posting a 1:39.855, almost five seconds slower than the Mercedes-powered McLaren of Kevin Magnussen.
Kobayashi admitted Caterham was focussing on helping Renault develop its power unit before looking at its own performance.
“This is what we have in our hands right now so we have to help them to be able to fight with the other engine manufacturers,” he told reporters on Thursday.
“At the moment, we are definitely too weak pace-wise, so we give the maximum chance to Renault [to work] and then after we have to work on our car,” he said.
“So we are waiting for the engine system [before changing focus].”
When asked about the severity of the problem, Kobayashi said there was a noticeable speed distance on the straights and through the corners due to the way the unit delivers its power.
“During testing, we meet some other cars [on track] and clearly we can see the Mercedes cars are much quicker in the straights, 20-30km/h more and it would mean different braking points, everything.
“We will see what we can do in a short time. At the moment, we are definitely quite late [behind].
“This is what we are basically waiting for because we have too aggressive power delivery, which is very difficult to handle under acceleration out of the corner.
“So at the moment, slow corners are very difficult because we don’t know how much grip we can get.”
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