Looking back at the huge falling out between Red Bull Racing and Renault in 2015, it’s still amazing to see how quickly things have changed for both parties.
It’s fair to say the two corporations had a fairly large falling out.
Red Bull Racing attempted to walk away from Renault and Renault considered walking away from Formula One altogether.
Fastforward several months and after failing to do a deal with either Mercedes or Ferrari, Red Bull Racing ended up going back to Renault for a new power-unit deal in 2016.
Red Bull refused to refer to their engine supplier by name, instead referring to their partner or their sponsored branding of Tag Heuer.
Renault meanwhile purchased Lotus and became a fully fledged manufacturer in Formula One once again.
It turned out to be a good move, Renault obviously improved their engines during 2016, enabling Red Bull Racing to overtake Ferrari in the Formula One constructors battle.
The turnaround was so great that Red Bull Racing would eventually sign a new deal with Renault for 2017 and 2018 and sister team Toro Rosso would also revert back to Renault from Ferrari.
Renault meanwhile are going through a transitional period, but once the team is built back on solid foundations it looks like they could prove to be competitive once again as a fully fledged manufacturer in their own right.
So with Renault’s own ambitions where does that leave Red Bull Racing?
McLaren famously dumped Mercedes in favour of the fledgling Honda engine as they believed they couldn’t compete with a manufacturer.
Is that the case between Red Bull Racing and Renault? Especially considering their more recent history?
‘We have the guarantee of absolute parity ? and setting that benchmark is great for them to be able to evaluate themselves against,’ Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner told motorsport.com.
‘They are in a building process and will have an immediate reference of what their engine is capable of.’
Referring back to the fall-out he added: [The difficulties of 2015] was actually the catalyst for positive change and that change has happened ? and the benefit we are starting to see over the course of this year.
‘So long as that continues then hopefully it should put us into an area within the next 12 months of where we were with the V8s ? within a couple of percent of the best engine.
‘And as far as their own team is concerned, I think we are a great benchmark for them.’
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