Renault don't have a 'blank cheque' to aid return to success

Renault chassis technical director Nick Chester has insisted that the French manufacturer do not have a "blank cheque" to throw money at their car in order to aid their pursuit of race wins and subsequently a championship assault in future years, with them perfoming well in 2018 so far.

Although Renault have not secured even a podium place this campaign, they have earned their 'best of the rest' moniker behind the three biggest teams, Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull by settling into fourth position - 19 points ahead of Haas in fifth.

The German Grand Prix this weekend will mark the halfway stage of the season, and Renault's total of 70 points accumulated so far has already surpassed their season-total from 2017. Even though the progression is there to see, Chester insists the team cannot continue to throw money into car development.

“I don’t think there’s ever a blank cheque, unfortunately,” Chester admitted.

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“You have to justify what you want to do, show the value you’re going to get from how you want to expand, and you have to show that you’ve been credible along the journey, which I think we’re doing now.”

Renault took over the Lotus F1 team to return to the sport, and Chester has praised the amount of money which has been spent so far, even if he admits it was lucky the French manufacturer swooped in.

“I think we’ve been quite lucky.” Chester continued.

“Over the last two to three years since Renault took ownership of the team, we’ve pumped an awful lot of money into capital investment. You can see that all around the factory.

“We’ve got a paint facility we didn’t use to have, we’ve got buildings for machining chassis, and machining centre. We’ve got our own 60% wind tunnel.

“It’s a really good tool – it’s another area where we’ve had a lot of investment in the last two years to bring some of the systems up to the latest state. There’s been loads of investments."