03/07/2017
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen best appeared to sum things up when on the eleventh lap of the recent Azerbaijan Grand Prix he came over the radio.
"Oh no issue, issue with the engine," he reported, following it up moments later with: "Yep, here we go again, ******!"
It was the Red Bull driver's third retirement in four races, and while Barcelona was down to the overenthusiasm of Valtteri Bottas, in Canada and Baku it was entirely engine related.
However, the issues haven't been limited to Verstappen, for teammate Daniel Ricciardo and works drivers Jolyon Palmer and Nico Hulkenberg have each had their own problems over the course of recent GP weekends.
Looking ahead to this weekend's race in Austria, Red Bull's home race, Renault's engine boss Remi Taffin believes the problems have been resolved.
"The energy store issue we have seen has been addressed and the new energy stores are to a different specification without this concern," he said.
"With the ICE, the latest specification addresses the problems we've seen to date," he added. "In Austria, we have the latest versions of components and we should not see any repeats of previous woes."
The Frenchman echoes Cyril Abiteboul's claim that there will not be a major upgrade this year, rather continued smaller upgrades.
"We will consolidate the power improvement made for Baku and aim to deliver more," he said. "There is no big plan with brand new upgrades, just continual improvement of the entire package."