Renault have urged Red Bull to stop ‘publicly bashing’ their efforts as it’s doing more harm than good, according to Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul.
Renault is struggling to adapt to the new engine regulations and has only just got on top of its reliability struggles, but remains down on power compared to Ferrari and Mercedes.
‘Factory team’ Red Bull and customer team Toro Rosso have both been vocal in their complaints, the former more so, and that has hurt Renault’s confidence which Abiteboul believes is key to turning their fortunes around.
“What I think was needed more than anything was to again build confidence in ourselves,” he told Autosport.
“I compare the situation to 2005 when we designed and built one engine which allowed us to win the championship.
“I look at the confidence we had back then to do that sort of thing, to shortcut all the processes in terms of validation.
“Now, each time we try and speed things up we immediately get sacked on track because of various issues. There’s a vicious circle we need to invert.”
He says Red Bull must stop publicly criticising them so much and that’s something he is working on changing.
“That is one of the difficulties we have with our relationship with Red Bull.
“When you are not one single team it is more difficult to again build up the confidence in a group than when you are completely integrated,” he added.
“That’s one of the things we are working on. We are trying to get Red Bull to support us rather than bash us publicly.”
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