Renault says it has plans to introduce "substantial" developments to its power unit throughout the 2018 season which it's confident will allow it to completely close the gap to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari.
Renault chose to focus on reliability over performance during the off-season following a spate of failures last year but is now confident it has tackled those problems and can instead focus on boosting outright power.
According to Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul, the planned developments could be worth upwards of half a second per lap in race conditions, prompting hope that it can edge closer to its opponents.
"We are talking about a substantial amount of in-season development," Abiteboul is quoted as saying by Autosport. "It is more than the gap we have now, in my opinion, from the top teams, certainly in the race at least."
The first developments are set to be introduced at next motnh's Spanish Grand Prix, focusing on power management and qualifying, though the major hardware upgrade won't happen until Renault introduces its second engine of the season, potentially in Canada.
"We have more stuff coming in terms of engine power from race five onwards," he added. "There are a couple of improvements in the way we are operating the engine and that’s more in qualifying.
"There will be more coming, but obviously the next proper improvement will be with hardware upgrade [but] that’s not going to be before we introduce power unit number two, which I hope will be as late as possible."
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