Budkowski: Renault won't be winning in 2019

Renault says that they won't be in a position to be fighting for championships next year. The signing of Daniel Ricciardo signalled the intent by the team to be fighting with the best however according to the team's executive director Marcin Budkowski, the team are some way from being in that position.

Speaking with French publication Auto Hebdo, Budkowski explained that Renault was not in a position to be challenging for titles and regular wins in F1.

“We’re currently 1.5 seconds from the best. It would be ridiculous to say that we can erase this deficit when you consider organisations like Mercedes and Ferrari.

“But Renault is now a big organisation that continues to grow. At the end of the season, we will have grown by 50% compared to the workforce present at the buyout of Lotus in December 2015.”

Budkowski did go on to explain just how hard Renault was working to get to that point however, with the hiring of staff added to the strict timeframe Renault are operating within to get to such a position by 2021.

“We will be close to 700 people at the end of the year but that does not mean that the fruit of the collective work of these 700 people will be visible from January.

“When people arrive, a time of adaptation is necessary. When you have young people, you have to train them.

“And we recruited a lot of apprentices and newly graduated talents. We are only now seeing the benefits of the recruitments of 2016 and 2017 now.”