Renault Sport
Renault team boss Frederic Vasseur says that the team is looking to build its team around youngsters, rather than through signing a top-name driver.
Renault returned to Formula 1 as a full works team with Jolyon Palmer promoted from his position as Lotus' reserve driver to line up alongside McLaren outcast Kevin Magnussen.
Renault also has GP3 champion Esteban Ocon, last year's top GP2 rookie Sergey Sirotkin and Canadian youngster Nicholas Latifi signed as test drivers.
Vasseur insists that Renault has recruited young drivers in order to plan for the next few years, in its attempts to eventually compete for the championship.
"When the drivers were chosen the focus was already on 2018 and 2019," he told the official F1 website.
"That goes for the car side as well as for the driver side. We had to find the champion of 2019 - and not one from 2010!
"If you look at the past, all the success stories were always based on drivers: Renault and Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel…
"So we will build up the team on drivers. This is an investment, just like the wind tunnel or the engine."
Vasseur nonetheless added that Renault's primary focus in 2016 is not regarding drivers but on building up the team.
"With Jolyon we were competitors in GP2 where he beat Stoffel [Vandoorne], but it is always different when you are competitors than if you work on the same project," he explained.
"I knew Kevin a bit from McLaren. But to be honest, drivers are right now not our main issue.
"Those we have are dedicated and do their job and are able to push - and I push them to push harder!
"When you look at the situation, you have two guys in the cockpit and one thousand guys behind them - that is what has to be managed."
