With just over a week to go before the first free practice session of the 2006 season, and with his team's pre-season testing at an end, Renault's chassis technical director, Bob Bell, is confident that both world Championship titles can be retained.

"It has been a tough winter, with some very demanding engineering and logistics tasks to manage," admits the Englishman. "Since then, though, our strong performance in winter testing has given everybody a genuine boost in motivation. It has been an intensive winter of preparation, and we sincerely believe we have a strong chance of successfully defending our championships."

Meanwhile, a study of the numbers that have come out of the French team's winter tests also gives plenty of reasons for reassurance. Not only have the Renaults consistently been around the top of the timesheets at every type of circuit during the winter, but they have run with impressive reliability since the track debut of the R26 and its RS26 engine on 10 January in Jerez.

In spite of pushing the development of the R25 until the very last race of the 2005 season, the team hit its project milestones and had the R26 ready before Christmas for static testing.

The car ran on the date planned 12 months beforehand, 10 January 2006, and two weeks later, there were two new cars available for the test team to work with.