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Motor racing-Renault confident of making big step up

By Alan Baldwin LONDON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Revamped Renault are confident their Formula One power unit will be a lot better this season after struggling in a 2014 campaign dominated by Mercedes. "We knew what we had to do over the winter and we know what we have achieved," F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said on Wednesday ahead of the start of testing in Spain at the weekend. "We believe we have made a very big step in performance and will be more reliable. "We may not have erased all the gaps but we are confident that we have gone a long way to making up the deficit of last season," the Frenchman added. Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso, both owned by the Austrian energy drink company, are now Renault's only teams after Lotus switched to Mercedes and Caterham went into administration with no buyer emerging. Red Bull, champions four years in a row until they were dethroned by Mercedes last season, won three races in 2014 with Australian Daniel Ricciardo after a miserable start to pre-season testing. The Renault engine was plagued with reliability issues, completing only a handful of laps in the first test, and was also outperformed by Mercedes throughout the campaign. Last year was the first of the new V6 turbo hybrid era, replacing the old V8s, and the major change for 2015 is the reduction in the engine allocation from five to four per driver per season. That will put even more of a premium of reliability but Renault F1 director of track operations Remi Taffin said big steps had been taken in that area already and this year's engine was very different. "Admittedly last year our record was not the best we could have hoped for," he said. "But we worked very hard and made real improvements on reliability in the second part of the year. "In fact we already had 2015 in mind last year as we ran all the parts to the life expected this season. That is, instead of running for the distance demanded by a five-per-year cycle, we tested them based on a four-per-year cycle, or 20 percent more than required. "We feel prepared knowing that the parts have been running to the lifecycle needed for some time with very few issues." Renault have also carried out a structural reorganisation over the winter, with Taffin now in charge of all track and factory operations. (Editing by John O'Brien)