In the aftermath of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Renault F1 Sport head of track operations Remi Taffin is adamant that the ‘one second gap’ to Mercedes will be closed and that all is in place at Viry-Chatillon to recover from their dismal pre-season.

Taffin said, “It is a fair assessment to say we’re behind Mercedes on the straights. That’s obvious. Saying it is one second is difficult, but it is not one tenth, it’s closer to a second than a tenth or a hundredth. We know how far we are from Mercedes and we know what we can achieve for the next race to close the gap.”

“In the power unit we are running we already have the necessary components to achieve this recovery, it’s just a matter of optimising everything and using everything to the full power. We  have to fix the reliability and fix the way we use all these things together and try to make them work,” explained Taffin.