Renault Sport's Remi Taffin says the French manufacturer isn't planning any further "big" engine upgrades this season, despite having used just 11 tokens so far, leaving it with 21 to play with – the most of any supplier.
The manufacturer, which supplies both its own team and Red Bull – and will also supply Toro Rosso next season – introduced a new spec at the beginning of the season which helped it close the gap to its rivals. That was followed by a small upgrade in Bahrain and then a major upgrade in Monaco, which it believes gained around half a second per lap.
Although it still lags behind the Mercedes unit, it's believed to be a match for Ferrari's and that, compared to where they were last year, is a "good step" according to Taffin.
"Where we were coming from was a difficult year last year and now we can see the improvement on track and everything we got out from the factory to the track was working well, so that was a good step forward," he said.
"The first race or actually the Monaco/Montreal specification we introduced, it’s all working well. I just have to say we’re on it, but we have a good way to go."
No big upgrades until 2017
Admitting they have ground to make up still, Taffin says Renault are focusing on extracting what they can from the current spec unit before introducing another major step in 2017 at the first race.
"I think it [the next upgrade] will be next year," he said. "The big step we will have will be next year’s engine, race one.
"Until we get to the end of the season now we will be working on the specification we have now, trying to extract the most out it, but there won’t be any more let’s say big step as we had for race one [Australia] and six [Monaco]."
