Renault are aiming to secure “at least five wins” during the 2015 season as it looks to close the performance gap to rival Mercedes.
The French manufacturer admits it ended the 2014 season with a deficit of about 60 horsepower to Mercedes, which it hopes to reduce to around 30hp by the time the cars arrive in Australia for the first race.
“We estimate that our gap to Mercedes at the end of the 2014 season was about 60hp,” managing director Cyril Abiteboul told Canal+.
What are tokens?
The power unit is made up of a total of 66 ‘tokens’. Certain parts are assigned more tokens because they have a greater influence over performance. Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari are given 32 tokens each, with which they can use to modify their engine.
“We hope to close this gap by half at the start of the season in Melbourne. Unlike Mercedes, we will start the 2015 season with the 2015 version of our engine,” he said in reference to claims Mercedes will use it’s 2014 engine for the first few races. However it has been confirmed they won’t.
Abiteboul confirmed they will have around 10 ‘development tokens’ to use during the season, having already used some to upgrade the engine over the winter period.
“To date, we have used about two-thirds of our allowed tokens to change our engine this year.
“My goal is to claim at least five wins this season,” he added, with Red Bull almost certain to account for all of them as, with the loss of Caterham and Lotus switching to Mercedes, Renault now supply just two teams – the other being Toro Rosso.
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