Renault

Interesting facts

Renault made its Formula 1 debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix with the RS01, the sport's first regularly raced turbocharged car - its unreliability earned it the nickname 'yellow teapot,' and it failed to finish any of its early races. On 1 July 1979, Jean-Pierre Jabouille scored the first win for a turbocharged car in F1 history at the French Grand Prix in Dijon, with teammate Rene Arnoux finishing second in the same race, a result that proved turbo power was competitive and prompted rivals to follow suit. Alain Prost lost the 1983 drivers' title to Nelson Piquet's Brabham-BMW by a single point at the season-ending South African Grand Prix; financial troubles then forced Renault to withdraw its works team after 1985 and continue only as an engine supplier. The Williams-Renault partnership (1989-1997) delivered five constructors' championships (1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997) and four drivers' titles, won by Nigel Mansell (1992), Alain Prost (1993), Damon Hill (1996) and Jacques Villeneuve (1997). Benetton switched to factory Renault V10 power in 1995 after eight years with Ford, immediately winning Michael Schumacher his second world title and Benetton's first constructors' championship, ending Williams's three-year run of titles. The Renault-Nissan Alliance bought the Benetton team for $120 million on 16 March 2000; rebranded Renault F1 Team and based in Enstone from 2002, the works outfit scored its first win since the 1983 Austrian Grand Prix when Fernando Alonso triumphed at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso won back-to-back drivers' titles with Renault in 2005 (becoming the youngest world champion at the time) and 2006, with the team also taking both constructors' championships, making Renault the second French constructor and the first French-licensed team to win the title. At the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed on team orders, triggering a safety car that helped teammate Alonso win from 15th on the grid; the scandal broke in August 2009, and while team principal Flavio Briatore received a lifetime FIA ban and engineer Pat Symonds a five-year ban, a French court overturned both rulings in 2010 over procedural violations. After a letter of intent signed in September 2015, Renault bought the Lotus F1 Team and returned as a works constructor from 2016, but the five-year comeback (2016-2020) never produced a title, before the outfit was rebranded Alpine for 2021. Renault's Formula 1 history ran from 1977 to 2020, 24 seasons in total as a French team. Renault won the Constructors' Championship 2 times, in 2005, 2006. The team scored a total of 1777 constructors' championship points.