Renault's promising F1 upgrade only used 3 of its 32 power unit tokens
The FIA has confirmed that Renault has used just three power unit tokens on the major upgrade introduced at the Monaco GP in the cars of Daniel Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen.
The French manufacturer used seven of its allocation of 32 over the winter, and then one extra token was deployed at the Bahrain GP, making a total of eight for the engine spec that won the Spanish GP in Max Verstappen's Red Bull.
Despite the leap in performance provided by the Monaco upgrade, the FIA's latest numbers show that just three more have been used, with a new total of 11. In other words, Renault still has 21 tokens to use before the end of the season – more than any of its three rivals.
Before the FIA confirmed the numbers, Renault Sport's Cyril Abiteboul said that token usage was not necessarily the key to performance.
“You need to completely disconnect usage of tokens from performance,” he said. “You can use all your 32 tokens or whatever without creating any performance, and with one token you can have one magic bullet which is creating a lot. With what we have understood now we now have a ratio of performance per token which is much higher than last year.”
The current official figures are as follows:
- Ferrari 26 (6 remaining)
- Honda 18 (14 remaining)
- Mercedes 21 (11 remaining)
- Renault 11 (21 remaining)
