F1 | Renault, Abiteboul polemical: "We are collateral victims of the title fight between Ferrari and Mercedes"

Interviewed by Motorsport.com, Cyril Abiteboul has released some far from banal statements regarding the Renault situation.

First of all, the team principal explained the slow regression of the French team in this second half of the season: “We are part of a very close mid-table group, with most of the cars around us benefiting from and monitoring the development of the top teams (Mercedes and Ferrari, ed.), who are in the midst of an 'arms race' to the title" - has explained. “In my opinion, we are almost a collateral victim. We are seeing the side effects of a Ferrari that at one point had an advantage over Mercedes and a Mercedes that, in turn, had a remarkable rate of development to catch up again. According to current regulations, this has a positive impact on all other customer teams, i.e. Force India, Haas and Sauber, who benefited from this two-way title fight. We are isolated: it's not a problem because we are a manufacturer, we have full responsibility, but we need everything (engine and chassis, ed.) to progress".

The poor competitiveness of the Renault power unit (still stuck at 'specification B'), obviously overshadowed the improvements made by the Ensone team in other areas: “The chassis is progressing, but not at a pace that can compensate for the rate of development of the top teams or the lack of engine improvement, because the specifications of the power unit have not changed since Montreal” – continued Abiteboul. “But beyond that, the machine may not be at its full potential: we have made many evolutions and some of them we may need to revisit as they are not working as we want. In short, it is really difficult to give a definitive conclusion. But it's fair to say we're not really in a happy place at the moment.".