Sainz: Honda has shown that it is possible

Red Bull are the benchmark team of the Renault powered brigade, easily quicker than McLaren and the Renault works outfit, yet they fall short of challenging Mercedes and Ferrari because they simply do not have the horsepower.

In Suzuka qualifying, Max Verstappen was quickest of the Renault powered cars with the third best time, finishing 1.3 seconds down on Lewis Hamilton's pole-winning time in the weather affected final run in Q3, it would be fair to say that was an exaggeration of the gap, which was probably around seven or eight tenths of second.

With Daniel Ricciardo suffering technical issues early in Q2, the reality for Renault is that, other than Verstappen, they had no other car in Q3 while Honda had both their cars in the top seven!

On the day, Renault were 13th and 16th with Carlos Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg respectively, with Fernando Alonso 18th and Stoffel Vandoorne 19th, the McLaren duo slowest of the qualifiers - Marcus Ericsson crashed his Sauber early in Q1 and did not set a time.

For McLaren, the swap from Honda to Renault is proving to be a huge and costly mistake. The Japanese manufacturer they ditched last year appear to have closed the gap to their French rivals and at Suzuka they may have actually been better.

On Saturday in Japan, in a first public criticism of his team, Nico Hulkenberg aired his concerns about the performance deficit and apparent lack of development coming from Vichy, while the team's ambassador Alain Prost backed the German and suggested something is amiss with the team in this final half of the season.

After a tough afternoon at Suzuka, behind the Red Bulls, Sainz in tenth ended best placed of the other Renault powered cars, but he too could not contain himself when he told reporters, "I just think we need more power, which we don’t have and we don’t get it for whatever reason."

"If we wanted to be in Q3 in Japan we just needed more power, and Honda has shown that it is possible," a low blow at Renault from the driver who will move to formerly Honda powered McLaren.

The young Spaniard was not finished, "I think there was a big setback with probably the engine side. We didn’t expect Ferrari and Mercedes to do such a big step through the year."

"We thought that the B-spec was probably going to be just enough, but we’ve seen at the moment that it is not enough. We brought things to the chassis, probably the chassis is not that bad, but on the top speed side we are not where we want to be."

The C-Spec engine has more power but Sainz explained why they are not bolting it on to the back of his RS18, "The team is fully sure that with our fuel it is just not reliable enough, so I fully back the team with whatever decision they take."

For now, Renault are fourth in the constructors' championship and thus Best of the Rest, albeit massively behind Red Bull in third.

With four rounds remaining in the championship, the French team face a down-to-the-wire challenge from a resurgent Haas team who are only eight points behind.