Renault chief Cyril Abiteboul believes his side’s engine reliability problems at the start of the 2019 Formula꧒ 1 season are “short-ཧterm pain for long-term gains” in performance.

The French manufacturer had high hopes heading into the season and was confident its supposed power unit 🍃gains would help it close the gap to the leading trio of𓂃 Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

But it has been ཧhit by a ꦰnumber of reliability issues early in the current campaign, particularly gremlins related to its MGU-K.

“We clearly need to improve the reliability of the engine,” ꦏAbiteboul said during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend.

“Over the winter we have been very vocal about the expectation but also about the amꦆbition in terms of pow🌌er gain on the engine.

“I think we’ve accomplished that, but in order to secure that we ha🧜d to on a number of occasions to fast-track some of the internal processes because it’s a C🧸atch-22.

“You’re running against time, and sometimes also running against limitations in resources, and clearly every single time we could, we biased our internal proc💯esses towards performance.

“So we areಞ paying a little bit for that, but I hope that it’s short term pain for long term gain.

“On the chassis side, I’mꦺ extremely positive about the rate of development, which is stronger than it’s ever been, which is saying something abo♛ut also the new Renault that we are starting to see in action.”

Renault endured a tough weekend in Baku and failed to score any points as it fell from fourth to ꦉseventh in the constructors’ championshi𓆉p.

Abiteboul has targeted a “reset” for the Enstone squad during the European stret🙈ch of the season, which begins later this month at the Spanish Grand Prix.

“Very clearly, it’s b🍬een a bad weekend,” he conceded following the race. “From FP1 onwards we never found our p⛄ace despite big changes to the car overnight.

“We finally managed to recover an acceptable competitiveness level during t✅he race for Daniel but it would never be the case for Nico.

“Overall, the first stint of the season has been disappointing, but if we manage to get allꩲ things in order we can have a decent competဣitiveness level as demonstrated on several occasions.

“We must absolutely see the♏ start of the European season as an opportunity to reset.”