Renault has asked Red Bull to take a step back and stop interfering in some areas of the areas of its power unit development in order to allow it to make up the deficit to Mercedes.
Renault lost its customer deals with Lotus and Caterham over the winter meaning it now only works with Red Bull and Red Bull's junior team Toro Rosso. The plan was for team and engine manufacturer to work closer together to address the failings of the 2014 power unit, but the season got off to a bad start in Australia and the two ended up aiming negative comments at each other via the press.
Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul insists the relationship has been patched up since the opening round, but has also politely asked Red Bull to stop interfering with areas of development where it believes it has more expertise.
"It's a fair thing that Red Bull is extremely demanding, which is good, but there are also a lot of people in Red Bull - it's a fact there is almost twice the amount of people within Red Bull than there are in Renault Sport - and those people have expectations but are also creating different opportunities and making suggestions," Abiteboul told ESPN.
"Sometimes I think we are not firm enough in closing order and saying, 'Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing', if you know who I am referring to. We have been in there for a while, we know how to build engines and we have been a bit too, how should I say it ... polite and open and candid with the way we are dealing with our partner teams. That's the way we are, but maybe we need to be a little bit more robust in our conviction that we can address the performance deficit."
Abiteboul said there are areas in which Red Bull can help, but there are others where its involvement has become a hindrance.
"We need to really select the topics for which they can make a contribution and support, and do that fully and completely with them without any sort of hesitation, and then there are some topics where we need to say 'No, sorry, you cannot help. It's not that we do not want you to help, it's just that you cannot help and you are going to do more harm than good'. I think it's about filtering between those two classifications of activities and drawing a line between the two."
Read more about the future of Renault in F1 in ESPN's exclusive interview with Abiteboul.