Abiteboul: Red Bull 'will never learn loyalty'
May 23 - Red Bull and Renault appear to be speeding towards divorce.
Red Bull, a constant critic of the performance of its Renault engines, is currently weighing up a 2019 switch to Honda.
Renault's deadline for that decision is looming, and boss Cyril Abiteboul seems resigned to losing Red Bull.
"Red Bull criticising its engine supplier is nothing new," he told El Confidencial.
"We have been with them for 12 years, won eight championships together, and yet Renault is still criticised. We are used to it.
"They will never learn and they will never be able to appreciate the need for loyalty and commitment to a supplier," Abiteboul added.
The Frenchman even said that when Renault returned to F1 in 2015, it offered to form a works relationship with Red Bull "and they declined the offer".
"If we bought a team it was because the possibility of integration was not attractive to them."
But Abiteboul dismissed Red Bull's claim that it is held back by its current engine.
"They have the capacity to win races this season, they did it in Shanghai already and they also would have in Baku if their two drivers had not crashed," he said.
If Red Bull and Renault do split, Renault will still have McLaren as a customer.
"If Red Bull is the aerodynamic reference, then McLaren is for the mechanical part of the car. It's a great opportunity for us so we'll see where it takes us, for now until 2020. We'll see what happens then," Abiteboul said.
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