Prost: Renault is not up to par

Renault Sport F1 Team has been struggling for several races. While the Losange is fighting to maintain its 4th place in the Manufacturers' Championship by having an 11-point lead over Haas, the RS 18 of Nico Hulkenberg et Carlos Sainz Jr failed to bring home points at the Russian GP in Sochi.

Alain Prost, the Renault Sport F1 Team consultant, spoke on Canal+ about the worrying situation at Renault which is struggling to follow the objectives set at the start of the year.

“It's very difficult at the moment because we are no longer going to make many changes to the car and the engine while there are still 5 Grands Prix to compete because we are preparing for next year. We'll have to turn our backs. We haven't really progressed, we even seem to be regressing in certain areas while others have made good progress on the engines”, recognized the four-time world champion.

“Our preparation for next year is going well, but we know that it will not be possible to catch up with the leaders in one year. We would have liked to get closer to the best in the second part of the season, but we are not there and we must be aware of that. We have to remain realistic and analyze what is happening because we are not where we should be.”, launched the Professor.

Alain Prost admitted that the stableenstone lacked success on the urban route of Sochi.

“Carlos gets hit at the start and loses 20 charge points and his race was already over. Nico had a superb start to the race which was totally in line with the plan, but we had to ask him to limit his fuel consumption because it was very high and we don't know the reason. This was very detrimental to him since he lost around half a second. We also anticipated his stop so that he remained ahead Grosjean, but it was too early a stop and we didn't have the necessary speed anyway. This has been the case since the start of the weekend, that’s why we’re trying to make a difference in strategy”, added Alain Prost.

Discover the analysis of the Russian GP carried out by our special correspondents in issue 2185 of AUTOhebdo, available from Monday evening in digital version on all platforms, and from this Wednesday on newsstands.