Abiteboul: Our budget is 60 percent less than Mercedes

While Mercedes have cleaned up, winning ten titles in ten years, in this budget-heavy hybrid turbo era Renault are lagging way behind in both their power unit package and their team.

In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, Abiteboul revealed, "The budget we're operating on is about 60 percent less than what Mercedes is spending. That's a handicap, but when the budget cap comes, this handicap becomes a strength."

"To catch up with what Mercedes is currently spending would be a huge challenge. The numbers that the top teams spend are unacceptable and we have to protect these teams from themselves."

Facts are, since motorsport began money has generally meant horsepower, thus no surprise there is a deficit in a performance related to that. The reality is that Renault are anything between a second and a second and a half down on Mercedes when everything is tuned up.

Budget wise Mercedes are spending in the region of $500-million per season, with Renault on about $200-million, the impact this has on performance is apparent in the results.

"At the moment we are down 1.5 percent on the top lap time," revealed Abiteboul. "We need to reduce that by 50 percent. We do not want to be outclassed next year on race pace."

"In qualifying, we estimate our deficit to be 40 kilowatts. That's significant, but with a customer engine from Mercedes or Ferrari, we would have qualified in seventh place in Abu Dhabi, which also shows that we have a better chassis than our competitors. But not as good as the three top teams."

"Therefore, the first focus is on engine development. I do not want to have to say next year that we missed too much in qualifying. There is no reason why we should not close the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari with the engine over the winter. It will take a little longer with the chassis."

Although relative to Mercedes and Ferrari, Renault power units may lack punch but they are still good enough to win races when bolted onto a good race car such as the Red Bull RB14, suggesting that the French team need to up the ante on the chassis side.

Abiteboul acknowledged, "Absolutely. The chassis makes the biggest contribution to our backlog. That's why we've changed the structures and operation of the chassis department in Enstone."

"Marcin Budkowski has been responsible for this since the middle of the year. That may not pay off tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow..." concluded the French team boss.

Next year Renault will only power Mclaren as a customer team, and of course their own project with Daniel Ricciardo joining Nico Hulkenberg in the French team for 2019.