The eleventh-hour thumbs-up to buy the ailing Lotus team, left Renault with a monumental task, the French manufacturer having almost no time in which to prepare for its first season back in the sport as a constructor.

And while, it is the late decision that many cite as the reason for the team's progress, managing director Cyril Abiteboul disagrees, insisting that progress has been made but that the results are not reflecting this.

"The results we see on track at the moment don’t do justice to the amount of work and progress that is going on behind the scenes at Enstone and Viry," he said. "We are steadily building the team and recruiting more people and our rate of development is high.

"We saw this during the Silverstone test when we trialled some new aero and suspension parts that we hope will bring some added performance to the car," he added.

"Our focus, however, remains our mid and long-term goals and we continue to put a lot of effort into this. That’s not to say that 2016 isn’t important as a significant amount of resources are still going into racing this year.

"The results are not necessarily impressive," he admitted, "but we are learning lessons all the time that will serve us well in the future."

"We have updates still to come for this season but much of our development focus is on 2017," added team boss Fred Vasseur. "We had plenty of parts to bring performance to this year’s car at the Silverstone test and if it wasn’t for the weather we would have been running a lot more evaluations there.

"This year is all about developing the team," he insisted, "maintaining focus and getting all the details in place to be able to deliver once we have achieved the stronger performance that we’re all working towards.

"We are still fighting for every position on track at every race we attend. The positive thing is that even though the results are not coming at the moment, the team is still positive. Everyone is working hard and wanting to get to where we can deliver results. It is a team of racers both at Enstone and Viry. We will get where we need to be."