Friday 19 January 2018 14:15, UK
Renault say placing young drivers will become a key part of their future engine supply strategy as they aim to produce an F1 driver from their academy by 2020.
The Anglo-French team this week announced the third intake onto their academy programme since its relaunch in 2016 with three new drivers joining the four who remain from last year's roster.
The most experienced, 22-year-old British-Korean Jack Aitken, steps up to Formula 2 with Renault aiming to recreate the success of their young driver programme from the 2000s when Robert Kubica, Heikki Kovalainen and Romain Grosjean all graduated to F1.
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Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have successfully brought young drivers into F1 in recent years through different routes and Cyril Abiteboul, Renault's team boss, is eyeing similar long-term success.
"No plan is constructed for the time being," he told Sky Sports News.
"But if you look at the way you can access F1, being able to use another team in order to confirm the fact that a driver is capable, it's very useful.
"We have this capacity in terms of what we are doing in terms of engine supply.
"Our plans for the next few years are very clear with Red Bull and McLaren but that's something we are clearly taking into account as we are building and starting to think about the long-term strategy of our engine supply activity."
Abiteboul believes there is "always a connection between your engine supply strategy and your driver development strategy" - and suggests that future customer engine deals could include such an element.
"We know that looking at Mercedes, looking at a number of teams in the past," he added.
"That will also happen to us at some point in time. We cannot disconnect the two.
"Right now we have a legacy for when we were only an engine supplier in the relationship with Red Bull but as we build the next cycle of the strategy for engine supply activity we need to take that on board."
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He added: "That's the target of the academy, to be able to bring one of those guys into Formula 1 by 2020."
Renault secured the services of the highly-rated Carlos Sainz on loan from the Red Bull stable as part of the complex negotiations which saw Toro Rosso and McLaren swap engines for 2018
Speaking about why the team overlooked two drivers they tested, Sergey Sirotkin and Kubica, Abiteboul said: "We obviously had an alternative option of Carlos - again, which is related to what happened in the course of 2017 in relation to engine which is another evidence that you cannot disconnect engine and driver strategy."
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