2017 review: Renault continues to build its foundation

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F1i continues to look back over the whole of the 2017 Formula 1 world championship season team-by-team and driver-by-driver.

Renault

It was only two years ago that Lotus F1 came close to going into liquidation, before their 11th hour takeover by Renault and reconstitution into a works team. In many ways that near-death experience still hangs over the team to this day, especially in terms of the talented personnel they were forced to let go at the time.

Renault continues to rebuild, and its hiring of the FIA's former F1 technical chief Marcin Budkowski for 2018 is particularly audacious, as was their acquisition of Carlos Sainz on a one-year loan. They've also made progress against their rivals on track, leapfrogging Toro Rosso, Haas and McLaren to finish the season in sixth place in the constructors standings. They were sixth in five Grand Prix events including the season finale in Abu Dhabi, with Nico Hulkenberg taking the lion's share of the honours.

Significant question marks over its power unit's performance and reliability remain. Even so, there's little doubt that this has been a year of strong and steady progress at Enstone.

Read on: Nico Hülkenberg

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.