Renault F1 is the Renault company's Formula One racing team. Renault has competed in Formula One (originally via subsidiary Renault Sport), both as an engine supplier and as a constructor from the late 1970s to the present day, with several breaks. Renault introduced the turbo engine to Formula One when they debuted their first car, the Renault RS01 at Silverstone in 1977. Although the Renault team won races and competed for world titles, it was as a supplier of normally aspirated engines to the Benetton and Williams teams in the 1990s that Renault first tasted world championship success. Renault returned to the category as a constructor in 2001 by taking over the Benetton team, which was renamed Renault in 2002. Their first championship as a constructor was achieved in 2005; the same year that they won their first drivers' championship with former test driver, Fernando Alonso, repeating in 2006.
Renault F1 is coordinated from the team's UK base at Enstone, Oxfordshire where the chassis are designed and built. Engines are manufactured at Renault's facility at Viry-Chatillon outside Paris. As well as their championship wins in 2005 and 2006, Renault also contributed to 5 driver's world championships (1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997) and 6 constructor's world championships (1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997) as engine supplier for Benetton and Williams.
Currently, Renault F1 is responsible for Renault's involvement in Formula One; Renault's other motorsport activities are conducted through Renault Sport.
Renault first involvement in Formula One was made by the Renault Sport subsidiary with Eu Gene Thor as Team manager. Renault entered the last five races of 1977 with Jean-Pierre Jabouille in its only car. The Renault RS01 was well known for its Renault-Gordini V6 1.5 L turbocharged engine, the first regularly used turbo engine in Formula One history. Jabouille's car and engine proved highly unreliable and became something of a joke during its first races, earning the nickname of "Yellow Teapot" and failing to finish any of its races.
The following year was hardly better, characterized by four consecutive retirements caused by blown engines, but near the end of the year the team showed signs of success. Twice, the RS01 qualified 3rd on the grid and while finishing was still something of an issue, it managed to finish its first race on the lead lap at Watkins Glen near the end of 1978, giving the team a 4th place finish and its first Formula One points.
Expanding to two drivers with René Arnoux joining Jabouille in 1979, the team continued to struggle although Jabouille earned a pole position in South Africa. By mid-season, both drivers had a new ground-effect cars, the RS10, and at Dijon for the French Grand Prix the team legitimized itself with a brilliant performance in a classic race. The two Renaults were on the front row in qualifying, and pole-sitter Jabouille won the race, the first driver in a turbo-charged car to do so, while Arnoux and Gilles Villeneuve were involved in an extremely competitive duel for second, Arnoux narrowly getting beaten to the line. While Jabouille ran into hard times after that race, Arnoux finished a career high 2nd at Silverstone in the following race and then repeated that at the Glen, proving it wasn't a fluke.
Arnoux furthered this in 1980 with consecutive wins in Brazil and South Africa. Jabouille continued to have problems with retirements, but in his only points finish he emerged victorious in Austria. At the end of the year Jabouille crashed heavily at the Canadian GP and suffered serious leg injuries, which effectively ended his career as a Grand Prix driver. Alain Prost was signed up for 1981. In his three years with the team, Prost showed the form that would make him a Formula One legend and the Renaults were among the best in Formula One, twice finishing third in the constructors championships and second once. Prost won nine races with the team while Arnoux added two more in 1982.
Arnoux left for rival Ferrari after 1982 and was replaced by American Eddie Cheever. In 1983, Renault and Prost came very close to winning the drivers' title but were edged out by Nelson Piquet (Brabham-BMW) at the last race of the season in South Africa. It emerged later that the Brabham team had been using illegal gasoline in that race. Had Renault filed an official protest, Piquet would almost certainly have been disqualified, which would have subtracted the 4 points he earned in the race from his winning total of 59 and would have left Prost (DNF that day) to win the title with 57. However, Renault declined to do so on grounds that a World Championship won on a technicality would have been tainted in the public's opinion and therefore less marketable.
After Prost left, the team turned to Patrick Tambay and Englishman Derek Warwick to bring them back to prominence. Despite a few good results, the team was not as competitive in 1984 and 1985 as in the past, with other teams doing a better job with turbo engines, some of which came from Renault themselves. 1985 provided another F1 first, as the team ran a third car in Germany that featured the first in-car camera which could be viewed live by a television audience. The car only lasted 23 laps before a clutch problem forced it to retire.
In 1985, major financial problems emerged at Renault and the company could no longer justify the large expenses needed to maintain the racing team's competitiveness. CEO Georges Besse pared down the company's involvement in F1 from full-fledged racing team to engine supplier for the 1986 season before taking it entirely out of F1 at the end of that year.
On March 16, 2000, Renault purchased Benetton Formula Limited for $120 million to return to Formula One. Renault maintained the Benetton name for the 2000 and the 2001 seasons. When reporting the purchase the International Herald Tribune commented that "the team will not race under the Renault name until it is ready to win and reap the marketing benefits."
Despite the purchase by Renault, the team still used the Playlife engines they had been using for the last 2 years. The drivers were Giancarlo Fisichella and Alexander Wurz. The team scored 20 points, as well as 2 podium finishes in Monaco and Canada.
2001
Wurz left the team in 2001 to become a test driver at McLaren and was replaced by British driver, Jenson Button, who was "on loan" from the Williams team. Button and Fisichella scored 10 points for the team, including a podium finish for Fisichella in Belgium.
2002
In 2002, Benetton were rebranded as Renault F1. Fisichella left to rejoin Jordan. The team replaced the Italian with fellow Italian Jarno Trulli. Button and Trulli scored 23 points during the season.
Despite outscoring his teammate during 2002, Button was dropped by Renault in 2003, his replacement was Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who had been impressive as a test driver the previous year. Alonso won the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix, the first time Renault had won a Grand Prix since the 1983 Austrian Grand Prix.
2004
In 2004, the team surprised everybody by becoming real contenders for second place in the Constructors' Championship. Trulli won the Monaco Grand Prix in spectacular fashion. However, his relationship with Renault (particularly with team principal and Trulli's ex-manager Flavio Briatore) deteriorated after he was consistently off the pace in the latter half of the year, and made claims of favouritism in the team towards Alonso (though the two teammates themselves remained friendly).
Commentators regularly point to the French Grand Prix as the final straw for Briatore, where Trulli was overtaken by Rubens Barrichello in the final stages of the last lap, costing Renault a double podium finish at their home Grand Prix. He subsequently announced he was joining Toyota F1 for the following year and in fact left Renault early, driving the Toyota in the last two races of the 2004 season. Hoping to secure second place in the Constructors' Championship, Renault replaced Trulli with 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve for the final three races. However, Villeneuve — away from F1 racing for almost an entire season and struggling to aclimatise quickly to racing at the premier level — did not impress, and the team finished third behind BAR.
2005
Giancarlo Fisichella was Trulli's replacement for the 2005 season. Fisichella had been thought by many F1 fans as a capable driver whose career had been dogged by the un-competitive cars he was given to work with. 2005 would see him finally driving a top class car, and indeed he took advantage of a rain-affected qualifying session to win the first race of the season, the Australian Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso then proceeded to steal the limelight by winning the next three races and building himself a considerable lead in the Drivers' World Championship, thereby doing the same for Renault in the Constructors' championship. Meanwhile, Fisichella experienced a run of bad luck that saw him fail to finish several races. After the San Marino Grand Prix, Renault and Alonso's championship leads came under massive attack from a superior McLaren-Mercedes team and Kimi Raikkonen respectively for the drivers championship. McLaren took the lead of the Constructors' World Championship by securing a one-two finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix, but that was to be the race in which Alonso secured the Drivers' title, becoming the youngest ever driver to do so. This achievement was followed by a win in China to secure the Constructors' World Championship for Renault after McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya's car was badly damaged by a drain cover coming loose on the track, breaking Ferrari's six-year stranglehold on that title. It was the first time Renault had won the title as a manufacturer, after plenty of success as an engine supplier in the 1990s with Williams.
On October 21 to celebrate winning both the Drivers' and Constructors' World Championships, and to mark the end of the V10 era in Formula One, Renault engineers at Viry-Châtillon used an RS-25 V10 engine to "play" Queen's We Are the Champions.
2006
Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella were retained for 2006, although test driver Franck Montagny was replaced by Heikki Kovalainen. The team's 2006 contender, the R26 - featuring a seven speed gearbox made of titanium, was unveiled at a launch event on January 31.
The team started 2006 well, Alonso won the opening Bahrain Grand Prix as well as the Australian Grand Prix and finished second in Malaysia behind teammate Fisichella to claim Renault's first one-two finish since René Arnoux and Alain Prost in 1982. They continued this, with Alonso taking 2 second places and a well earned win at his home grand prix in Spain, at the Circuit de Catalunya as well as the Monaco Grand Prix. Fisichella took 8th, 6th and 3rd place finishes in the San Marino Grand Prix, European Grand Prix and the Spanish Grand Prix.
The team recently celebrated its 200th Grand Prix at Silverstone, which was won by Fernando Alonso. As the Formula One season progressed to its North American stint, Fernando Alonso won the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Canada. The U.S Grand Prix was something of an exercise of minimising damage. Ferrari had a distinct performance advantage over the whole weekend. However Renault were the fastest of all the Michelin runners. Fisichella finished 3rd, well ahead of Alonso who finished 5th.
At the French Grand Prix, Renault were expected to be faster than Ferrari, however Ferrari again had the advantage. Alonso was running third for most of the race, unable to challenge the Ferraris of Schumacher and Massa. However a tactical switch to a two stop strategy enabled him to pass Massa and finishing second, minimising his points loss.
On 21 July 2006 the FIA banned the use of mass damper systems, developed and first used by the Renault team and subsequently used by 7 other teams, including Ferrari. Flavio Briatore has named McLaren as the team who complained to the FIA.[2] The system uses a spring-mounted mass in the nose cone to reduce the sensitivty of the car to vibration. This is particularly effective in corners and over kerbs to keep the tyres in closer contact to the track surface than they would otherwise be. [3] However race stewards at the German Grand Prix deemed the system legal. The FIA announced its intention to appeal the decision and Renault announced they would not race with the system for fear of retrospective punishment if the appeal was upheld. Renault's performance at the German Grand Prix was one of their worst of the season, however the team blamed blistering of their Michelin tyres, suggesting it was not a result of the loss of the mass damper system. The FIA International Court of Appeal met in Paris on August 22 2006, to examine the appeal made by the FIA against the decision handed down by the stewards at the German Grand Prix. The Court ruled that use of the device known as a Tuned Mass Damper is an infringement of Article 3.15 of the Formula One Technical Regulations.
Points in the Brazilian Grand Prix secured the constructor's championship for Renault in 2006.
On October 16, 2006, Renault announced the Dutch banking giant ING would replace Mild Seven as title sponsor for three years starting in 2007
2007
Renault has confirmed Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen as their race drivers for 2007. Test drivers will be Nelson Piquet Jr and Ricardo Zonta. The car for 2007, the R27, was unveiled on 24 January 2007, and bears a yellow, blue, orange and white livery.
Renault engines are also being used by Red Bull Racing team, while the Ferrari engine contract is being passed to Scuderia Toro Rosso (otherwise known as the second "development" Red Bull team).
