Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul has admitted that the company underestimated the challenge they would face on their return to Formula One as a full works team this season.
The former world champions have only scored points on two occasions this year, and have often struggled to get out of the first part of qualifying.
Now, talking to Autosport, Abiteboul has said that the team weren't expecting this season to be as difficult as it has been.
"It's fair to say this season has been much more difficult than we anticipated, and to a certain degree another demonstration of the pace at which Formula 1 is evolving," he said. "The car we are using is not from this year, but more or less designed in the winter of 2014-15, to which we added at the last moment the forced introduction of the Renault engine.
"So clearly it wasn't the best gestation you could imagine, but still we could not imagine that in 18 months there would be such a gap from this car to the others," he added. "Maybe we were a bit naive, but that's behind us now."
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