Can Mclaren win championships with Renault?

[Nitrodaze]

Mclaren dropped their very promising project with Honda for Renault engines with the reason given being that they are more likely to win races with the Renault engine at least than the then very buggy Honda engines. As it turned out, the Mclaren chassis was not as good as they proclaimed it was. The packaging of the chassis has had all manner of associated failures which has resulted in poor performances with a Renault engine that Redbull has used to win four races.

The benchmark for Mclaren was Redbull with a Renault engine and they have fallen well short of the mark. But there is a new regulation in 2019, which gives Mclaren a chance of a clean slate. If they can get round their design challenges and somehow put together a highly competitive chassis, the question is can they be a championship contender with the Renault engine?

One popular argument is that, if Redbull can win four titles with a Renault engine, why not Mclaren. There however, is one small difference in the context of both teams, Redbull was not competing with an aspiring works Renault team. Mclaren would be required to beat the works Renault team before it can defeat any other team for the title. The current rule require manufacturing teams to provide the same engine it uses to their customer teams. Hence Mclaren would be racing Renault with equivalent engine in both cars; in theory.

Which leaves us with two related questions, Can Mclaren beat Renault with a Renault engine? Can the Renault engine catch up to the Mercedes and Ferrari engines?

One could argue that Renault are on the F1 paddock with an aspiration to win the constructors title. To do that they would need to build a championship winning engine and chassis at some point. Which implies that there is a slim chance that Mclaren may have access to a championship winning engine at some point in the future.

With this hypothesis, what do you think, are they likely to win a championship with a Renault engine against a Renault team with Ricciado in one of their cars.