Gold Standard Inside An F1 Team's Inner Sanctum

As the RENAULT SPORT FORMULA ONE TEAM continues to move up the grid, we go behind the scenes with the French powerhouse to discover some of the secrets to its success…

- Stewart Bell

Renault is again turning heads in Formula One. The French car manufacturer has returned to the grid as a full works effort with an eye on the top teams, and it’s already started to snap on the heels of Red Bull Racing — the team it took to four-straight constructors’ titles between 2010 and 2013.

The brand itself has a long history in F1, dating back to the 1977 British Grand Prix, its RS01 the sport’s first turbocharged car — followed by 1979’s RS10, the first turbo F1 car to win a Grand Prix. Since then, the silverware has continued to stack up — Renault taking Fernando Alonso to two-straight world drivers’ championships, its brutally beautiful R25 (2005) and R26 (2006) bagging constructors’ crowns on either side of the V10 and V8 eras, against the might of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher. Its F1 operation straddles the English Channel; with its power unit HQ in Viry-Châtillon, near Paris, in France — while the race team itself is based in Enstone, England, and was founded as Toleman in 1981, before morphing into Benetton, Renault for the first time, Lotus, and then back to Renault again last year. But there has been plenty of work to do in rebuilding and restructuring since it re-purchased the cash-strapped Lotus team late in 2015, returning the Enstone facility to its fold.

RE-MATCHING THE TOP TEAMS