F1-Blog

The Renault team are the current joint world champions.

Renault have a long history in Formula 1. Renault joined the F1 fight in 1977, the team then won it's first GP in 1979, winning the French GP of that year and finishing 6th in the constructor championship. In 1983 Prost took the drivers championship and Renault finished 2nd in the constructors, however due to troubles inside the team they pulled out in 1985, but continued to supply the Lotus team with engines, but decided to leave completely the following year.

However Renault came back as an engine supplier in 1989 supplying the Williams team, with Thierry Boutsen winning both the Canadian and the Australian GP's that year. 1991 was a learning years for the Renault engineers learning what a winning F1 engine needed to do, this showed however as a Renault engine was in the winning the constructors championship from 1992 to 1997 in the back of both Williams and Benetton cars.

After their success as an engine supplier Renault went into talks in the later part of the 90's (some say from 1996 onwards) looking to purchase a team and become a full works Renault team. This came to fruition in 2000 as Renault bought and re-branded the Enstone based Benetton team from 2002 onward. The team ran as Benetton-Renault through the 2000 and 2001 season's, making the switch over to a full 'works' team in 2003 finishing in 4th in the constructors championship, but showing they where an emerging force in the sport.

2004 was the new teams first win, at Monaco Jarno Trulli pulled off a great drive to give the team their maiden victory, however this was marred by Trulli being pushed out of the team just 4 races later, Jacques Villeneuve took the seat, but struggled to come to terms with the car.

2005 is the season where it all seemed to come together for the Enstone team. Fernando Alonso showed he had not only pace in the car, but a good drivers mind. The Renault team won the championship edging out the arguably better McLaren / Raikonen partnership to become Drivers and Constructor champions.