Renault team principal Frederic Vasseur has warned against setting unrealistic expectations ahead of the season opening race in Australia next week, despite believing the team are in "relatively good shape".
The Frenchman has been in charge at the team for just two months following Renault's last-minute takeover of Lotus and he is therefore wary of predicting where Renault might sit amongst the other ten teams on the grid.
"It is very difficult to see where we are ahead of the start of the season," said Vasseur. "We need to focus on our job and try to improve where we can rather than spending time analysing where we are in relative terms.
"We have to fight the entire grid and everyone has the same targets: to go faster than the guys around them. We need to keep our opposition under pressure and never give up. It won’t be an easy task as we started very late for this season, but we will see for 2017."
Vasseur isn't too concerned by where they might find themselves at the first race and is instead focusing on their longer-term goals.
"Ultimately it doesn’t matter where we start, but we need to deliver in line with our targets," he added.
"We will always aim to finish in the points, but bearing in mind that we only created the team in December, we need to be realistic and not start pointing the finger at anyone."
