Renault couldn’t have dreamt of their push

One of the great things about the 2017 Formula One World Championship season was the competitiveness between the top teams.

For the past three seasons, whilst both Ferrari and Red Bull Racing flirted with the odd race victory and podium position, in the main the V6 Turbo-Hybrid era had been dominated by the Silver Arrows of Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had taken the title on three successive season and whilst ultimately, Hamilton made it both a fourth for his team and for him personally, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing were the better car on a number of occasions.

Whilst it has been well documented that Ferrari took a huge performance leap in 2017, the same should also be said for the power-unit of Renault.

Renault engines powered both Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen to race victories in 2017 and on this occasion, they were on merit as opposed to reliant on Mercedes ill fortune.

‘in the course of the season we unlocked different ways to manage the engine and to extract [extra] performance,’ Renault F1 team boss Cyril Abiteboul told motorsport.com.

‘The engine itself, between the end of last season to the end of this season, has improved more or less close to one second – when we use it to the full potential, which is not something we would do permanently – which is simply huge.

‘It was not without some impact on reliability, which clearly has been the big negative of the season, but clearly what we’ve done on the engine from a performance perspective is something that we never would have dreamt of, frankly.