For the upcoming 2017 Formula One Championship season, Fred Vasseur, Team Principal of the Renault F1 team, has secured a new driver line-up with the addition of Nico Hรผkenberg to join Jolyon Palmer, who will be embarking on his third season of working out of Enstone.
โOur driver line-up for 2017 shows our intent and aspirations. Nico comes to the team at a perfect time for both us and him,โ says Vasseur. โHe has experience of working with different teams, including those we expect to be our rivals next season. As well as a significant amount of experience, he has youth and hunger on his side. He has been a driver hungry for the right opportunity to help build a team and we are that team. It's a perfect match.โ
โJolyon has shown great development over the course of his rookie season with us, combined with his motivating approach and team spirit, and we feel we have a very good driver line-up for what we want to achieve in 2017.โ
As well as the new blood in the driver line up, next year's regulation changes should also give scope for the team to move further forwardsโฆ
โ2017 is a fantastic opportunity for us to take a significant step forward for many reasons,โ explained Vasseur. โThe change of regulations could mean quite a shake-up in the order of relative competitiveness, plus the fruits of our expansion will be ramping up. We made an early start to developing next year's car with this in mind.โ
โWhilst 2017 should see a good step forward, we are realistic in our expectations as we know that we won't leapfrog the midfield in a single season. However we are all pushing for a big improvement in competitiveness.โ
