Renault’s four customers will be able to utilise the power unit’s full potential for the first time this season in Canada.
The French manufacturer is confident they’ve worked through the various issues which plagued their pre-season and the opening six races which they admitted were run in “recovery mode”.
Remi Taffin, Renault’s head of track operations, says Canada will give them the first true reflection of where they stand amongst their competitiors.
“At the start of the season we said that we would be out of recovery mode and back on track from the Canadian Grand Prix onwards,” he said.
“In the last four races we’ve introduced several new upgrades and we will complete the process in Montreal, effectively giving us the first full opportunity to see where we are versus the competition.
“We have several new parts to debut here, primarily designed to give us greater reliability. As in previous races we have more upgrades to software to further enhance driveability and energy management.”
Taffin also revealed that they’ve taken an in-depth look at what went wrong in Monaco and they believe they’ve resolved those problems too.
“We have investigated the reasons for the failures in Monaco and have taken measures to ensure they do not reoccur. In particular we have looked at Vettel’s issue, which was traced back to a mechanical problem with the MGU-H.
“The exhaust issues on the Toro Rossos have also been investigated with the team and together we have seen how we can avoid further issues in future thanks to improvements to our diagnosis and understanding of the full exhaust system behaviour in the car.”
The biggest factor during Sunday’s race will however be energy recovery and fuel consumption as the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a high-speed circuit with few long corners for energy harvesting.
“With very few corners energy recovery via the MGU-K will however be pretty difficult as the cars do not slow frequently over the lap,” he explained. “As a result the emphasis will be on the MGU-H to recover energy through the exhaust gases – we’ll need as much energy as we can as we’ll be right on the limit with the fuel consumption here.
“Having said that, we will also monitor the right balance between traditional and electrical energy to decide the most effective way to use the fuel in the race.”
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