All manufacturers face the challenge of running 21 races on three power units in 2018, and it is a particularly big ask for Renault and Honda, who have suffered from poor reliability over the past seasons.

Rather than compromise ultimate power unit performance over the whole season by ensuring that each element lasts for seven race weekends, Renault may decide before the start of the season to run the full campaign with four or more engines, taking grid penalties as necessary.

That reduced mileage requirement would allow the team to run at higher performance levels for longer, while the additional units would also provide extra opportunities to introduce upgrades.

"I don't want to say too much about this at this stage, because it's still early days," said Abiteboul. "But we knew this regulation was coming, we knew what we had to do, and we are still a bit open-minded about the best way that we want to cover the season.

"In particular we are not assuming that we want to downgrade the performance potential in the engine because of reliability, and because of mileage. We're also looking carefully at the evolution of the regulations in terms of grid penalties.

"You may know that this has become a bit more flexible, a bit less painful, so we will factor that into the way that we are building the plan for this year in terms of engines in production, and possible engine penalties if we have to, or if we think that this is tactically in our advantage to do so."

Abiteboul said the works team would make a call on its plans between the end of testing and the first race in Australia, when it has a bit more information about performance and reliability.

"We want to establish the baseline, we want to know a bit more about ourselves, the performance of the engine as it is right now.

"If it's better for everyone to use four power units or four V6s, rather than three, we may take that decision. But it's really too early to talk about that."

Abiteboul says that the team will start the 2018 season with a similar level of performance to the end of last year, but will be able to make more extensive use of that performance, thanks to improved reliability.

"The target this year is to start the season first reliably, and which will allow us to make use of the full potential of the engine, something which we were not capable of doing last year.

"Which means that from a competitiveness perspective, from a performance perspective, the engine should be performing better.

"It will be comparable to the end of last year when we were using it at its maximum potential, which has not happened on many occasions, except maybe Abu Dhabi.

"If you look at where we were last year in terms of the reliability situation, if you look at the evolution in terms of the regulations, it's a no-brainer that this is what you have to put as a priority.

"But again the key message, the fact of being reliable opens up more options in terms of performance. You cannot [separate] performance and reliability, the two go together.

"When you work on reliability, you actually work on performance also."