Mario Illien, a Swiss engineer aiding Renault’s recovery, is hopeful that the French manufacturer will see improvements to its engine performance from the very beginning of the season.
Illien has previously worked with Renault and offered ideas to resolve some of their performance and reliability troubles, however his ideas were rejected with Renault opting to follow its own development path.
The car company, which will return to constructor status in 2016 following its takeover of Lotus, has once again employed Illien’s services and the 66-year-old is hopeful his ideas will deliver immediate improvement.
“No, it’s not so bad,” he replied when asked by Auto Motor und Sport if Renault would need to start from scratch in order to catch up with Ferrari and Mercedes.
“We will surely use [some of my ideas] and integrate them gradually into the engine,” he added. “I hope that we will begin to show progress early in the season.”
However Illien warned not to expect too much too quickly: “With the 32 tokens we could change quite a lot, but time does not allow it. We now need to see, in cooperation with Renault, what is possible in the limited time.”
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