The Renault Sport Formula One Team is expecting 2018 to be their final year of building ahead of a planned attack on the championship in 2019, according to team Principal Cyril Abiteboul.
The Renault works team made a welcome return to Formula 1 in 2017 having taken over the running of the floundering Lotus F1 Team, and Abiteboul has been a part of an intense hiring programme in order to improve their on-track results.
German racer Nico Hülkenberg and Spaniard Carlos Sainz Jr. will be Renault’s driver line-up in 2018, but Abiteboul believes the year will hopefully see an improvement on the fifty-seven points they scored in 2017, before they turn their attention on race wins and championship challenges from 2019.
“2017 was a year of progression and 2018 has to be the same, another year of progression, another year of construction,” said Abiteboul on Crash. “By the end of the year we want to say the construction phase is over, it was a three-year phase from 2016 to 2018, and now the next phase will be about attacking the top teams.
“We need to accept that we can’t be perfect everywhere and things take time but at the same time we have to show we are in the right trajectory.”
