Teapots, turbos and titles: Renault's wild F1 ride

The Frenchman won seven races across three years, and was in a commanding position during the run-in of the 1983 season. With four races left he had a commanding 14-point lead over Brabham BMW’s Nelson Piquet – Renault even went so far as to put up billboards in France congratulating “our champion” Prost.

However, the team was caught out by its conservatism. At first slow to adapt fuel pitstops when Brabham quickly proved them a strategically viable way to win a race, management also instructed the team to freeze development of its engine.

Piquet went on a charge while BMW kept developing its power unit. Two wins plus a third was enough to snatch the title from Prost and Renault by two points.

“It wasn’t Prost who lost the championship, it was Renault who threw it away,” commented a pithy Piquet. Prost, who had also fallen out with Larrousse, criticised the car in the wake of the final race at Kyalami and was promptly fired.

While Prost moved on to a highly successful stint at McLaren, Derek Warwick was brought in as a replacement for ’84 and ’85.

“There were some super people there in ’84, hard-nosed racing pros,” Warwick told Motor Sport. “But at the year’s end we lost most of them and they were replaced by people from the production car company who had no knowledge of racing. The ’85 car was diabolical, the whole thing turned to shit.”

Renault pulled out as an F1 constructor at the end of the year.

1985 onwards as an engine constructor

Lotus had taken on Renault as an engine supplier from 1983, with the partnership’s first wins coming in 1985 just when the French firm’s works team started to go south.

New recruit Ayrton Senna produced one of the greatest F1 drives of all time at Estoril in just his second Lotus race before adding another at Spa, while team-mate Elio de Angelis clinched victory at Imola after Prost’s disqualification.

Senna would win more races in a Renault-powered Lotus in 1986, but then the manufacturer, which was also supplying Ligier and Tyrrell at this time, decided to call a day on its Renault involvement at the end of 1986.

1990s: Renault returns with naturally-aspirated F1 engines

When the turbo-charged engines Renault helped usher in were then phased out, the French firm ironically teamed up with Williams from 1989 onwards and produced a naturally-aspirated offering.

Again it thought differently about F1’s perennial performance questions. While other engine builders went for V8 (Ford, Judd and Yamaha), V10 (Honda), or V12 (Ferrari and Lamborghini) engines, Renault came up with the first pneumatic-valved 3.5-litre V10 engine, the RS1.

Within six races the new Williams-Renault FW12 package was a winner courtesy of Thierry Boutsen at the Canadian GP, and the Belgian would win again at the season-closing Adelaide as the team finished second in the constructors’ fight – albeit a long way behind the dominant McLaren-Hondas.

Slowly but steadily though Williams was a coming force again – pushed along by Renault. Riccardo Patrese and Boutsen would win a race apiece in 1990, before Nigel Mansell joined for ’91 and the floodgates opened.

‘Red 5′ would claim five races in a late title-challenge, before utterly dominating 1992 with the FW14 – 17 years after its first involvement in F1, Renault had not one, but two world titles to its name as an engine manufacturer.

A year later and it had a couple more as Alain Prost swept to his fourth and final crown – plus another constructors’ championship. The success would continue as Renault expanded to supply Benetton too for 1995, Michael Schumacher racing to a second F1 crown.

Williams then took a pair of championship braces with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in ’96 and ’97 respectively, before Renault left F1 again, ten titles later.

Throughout the late ’90s the firm would keep a hand in F1 by supplying customer engines badged as Mecachrome and the Supertec to Benetton, Williams, BAR and Arrows, until the works engine programme was rebooted again upon Renault’s re-entry to F1 in 2002.

2000s: Renault claims first F1 titles as works team

Renault bought the Benetton team for $120m in early 2000. The engine was rebadged as Renault for 2001, with the Enstone squad becoming the full works operation from 2002.

In 2003 young test driver Fernando Alonso was paired with Jarno Trulli, and the Spaniard took his first win for the team at Hungary that season. More innovation came in the form of the 111° 10-cylinder engine, created to lower its centre of gravity and improve handling, but ultimately proving unreliable.

Two years later though and the team had a winning car – the technical direction from Enstone stalwarts Pat Symonds and Bob Bell, plus the leadership of arch-deal maker Flavio Briatore combined with Alonso’s talent to make Renault the lead challenger to the dominance of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari.

And it prevailed, Renault taking its first overall titles as a team since entering F1 in 1977, 28 years earlier. Alonso and Renault did it again in 2006, but the Spaniard was soon unsettled.

Renault had developed a pattern of half-commitment and intermittently losing interest through the years in F1 – first with leaving as a team in 1985, and then quitting as a champion engine manufacturer in 1997.

The car company was wavering over whether to commit to F1 much longer, and Alonso jumped ship to McLaren for 2007. This all preceded a downturn in fortunes on and off track…

2008: Renault at the centre of ‘Crashgate’ controversy 

After falling out with McLaren, Alonso was back at Enstone for 2008 – but the R28 car was off the pace. Again the team was in danger of being cast adrift by Renault, and so Briatore and Symonds hatched a plan to curry favour with the execs in one of F1’s greatest controversies

At the 2008 Singapore GP, Nelson Piquet Jr – who was privy to the scheme pre-race – was advised to deliberately crash early in the race to bring out the safety car, with Alonso already having pitted.

Thus the Spaniard was left at the front of the pack on a difficult-to-pass track, and duly took the victory. He’d win again in Japan, but a year later the scandal came out – when Piquet was sacked midway through 2009 he went straight to the FIA, resulting in bans for Briatore and Symonds.

A year later and Renault finally did quit F1 as a team – but would still enjoy more success elsewhere.

2010s: Renault wins more F1 world championships with Red Bull

In a repeat of its ’80s and ’90s success, while Renault ceased being involved as a team, it still took race wins and titles as an engine supplier Red Bull and former works team Lotus.

Red Bull had been gathering strength with the addition of Adrian Newey in 2006 and by 2009 was a title challenger – but 2010 was the real breakthrough season.

Sebastian Vettel emerged on top through an epic battle with Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber to become F1’s youngest ever champion for Red Bull – all powered by a Renault V8.

An unprecedented run to four consecutive Red Bull-Renault title braces would follow with Vettel, but in 2014 disaster struck.

Its new V6 turbo hybrid proved horribly unreliable, Red Bull barely able to do any laps at pre-season testing.

Vettel’s new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo would eventually take three wins in 2014 as the partnership rediscovered form, but the relationship was permanently fractured.

Across the next few seasons high-profile team members – including team boss Christian Horner and designer Adrian Newey – repeatedly claimed Renault was holding it back, with the power units ultimately renamed TAG Heuer with the re-entry of the French firm’s works team once again in 2016.

2016: Renault comes back to F1 (again)

As main financier Genii Capital foundered in its support for Enstone in its Lotus guise, so Renault stepped in to take over its old team from 2016.

A young line-up of Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Palmer was drafted in to drive the plain yellow car, representing a fresh start for ‘Reggie’.

That year and the following ones would represent a tumultuous time off-track and mediocrity on it, as senior staff and drivers were chewed through.

Cyril Abiteboul, Marcin Budkowski, Alain Prost, Laurent Rossi, Otmar Szafnauer, Alan Permane, Pat Fry, Davide Brivio and Bruno Famin were all senior leaders to leave from January 2021 to December 2023, and Carlos Sainz, Nico Hülkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, Oscar Piastri and Esteban Ocon were all jettisoned or jumped ship – as well as Magnussen and Palmer.

The team had been rebranded as Renault’s Alpine sports car marque from 2021, but its performance gradually became worse from then on – save for a shock Ocon win at Hungary ’21 – with 2024 its nadir.

Apparently lacking direction and suffering dire results, the team announced it would repoint its Viry power unit facility towards its WEC activities from 2026, effectively closing down its F1 engine activities after decades of success.

The future for the team – if it has one at all – now looks set to be with a customer engine deal from 2026.  Will it ever be a regular winner again?