Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has said their Renault engine has 100bhp less than Mercedes, in a worrying admission from the ex-champions.

Mercedes eased to victory in Australia last weekend, while Red Bull could only manage a best of sixth with Daniel Ricciardo.

A downbeat Horner told reporters: “We're probably 100bhp [brake horsepower] down on Mercedes at the moment.”

Renault were confident of closing the gap to Mercedes this season, and they hope that their display in Melbourne wasn’t the sign of things to come.

“We know that we made genuine progress over the winter but we could not show it here and in fact we would even seem to have moved backwards,” says Renault Sport managing director Cyril Abiteboul.

“Given the pace at which we conducted our development programme towards the last few weeks of the winter, there may not be lots to change to be able to access these improvements.”


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