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Renault says that only a pole position will be good enough to prove that its Formula 1 engine has closed the gap to the dominant Mercedes power unit.

Although the French car manufacturer has taken three victories this year with Red Bull, it is well aware that those wins have been helped by Mercedes tripping up in races.

But ahead of grands prix at the Marina Bay and Suzuka tracks that should suit Red Bull more, Renault's head of trackside operations Remi Taffin says that the ultimate ambition is to lock out a pole position.

"We know we can win races, and we are just in the position to be sure that we can grab this when there is opportunity," said Taffin.

"But what we are effectively after now is a pole position to show the pure pace - and it would obviously be easier to win a race in this condition."

FOCUS SHIFTING TO 2015

Taffin says that Renault has now got to the point where it has pretty much got everything it can out of the performance of this year's power unit.

That is why it is slightly more bullish about its prospects for the end of the year, but also why it can now start looking more to the winter developments that it hopes will allow it to deliver a much stronger pace in 2015.

"The most effort in terms of achieving what we wanted to achieve is behind us for this year," he explained.

"What we now get on track is actually the fruit of this work - and we now have the right direction to go for optimising the performance, plus we are able to repeat this every single race.

"This is the most important thing to us. We know what performance we have got, we know how to get it any time we want.

"So we will try to bring a little bit more race after race until the end of the year.

"But even if the focus is to try to get the most out of this year, we have to focus on next year."