Chris
Premium
Illien - no stranger to engine development partnerships - has worked with Adrian Newey in the past in a similar fashion. The end result of that partnership was the ever dominant McLaren-Mercedes MP4-13. With Renault struggling mightily to recover from the 2014 engine regulations overhaul, Red Bull brought Mario Illien in, in an engine consultancy role, at the end of last season to try and help Renault address the issues they had, and continue to have, with their power units.
However, respected F1 columnist Mark Hughes mentions that the relationship between Renault and Illien was always an uncomfortable one as Illien had for many years been the public enemy of Renault due to his successful partnership with Mercedes. This meant that the flow of information from the French side of development to the Illien side was hampered somewhat at a management level. This lead to two separate paths of development in 2015: A French development path, and an Illien development path.
Adrian Newey (left) and Mario Illien (right) have been partnered before and the results speak for themselves.
If this development does come to fruition, then in 2016 the Red Bull power unit will be a combination of a Renault-based engine with Illien-based ICE combustion principles and the addition of Red Bull Racing's ERS and electrical components.
This development comes after many months of public slating, mostly by Red Bull, of the Renault engine, and a refusal by Ferrari and Mercedes to supply the Milton Keynes team with parity engines for the 2016 Formula One season.
Over to you:
Do you think Red Bull will be more competitive than they are this year thanks to this new engine development path? Can they take the fight to Mercedes or Ferrari?
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