Renault won't be basing their 2017 car on their current challenger, but will instead look back a year at the Lotus E23 Hybrid which will form the foundation of next year's car according to team boss Fred Vasseur.
In its final year before it was taken over by Renault, Lotus finished sixth with 78 points on the back of several strong results including a podium finish at the Belgian Grand Prix for Romain Grosjean.
This year however, Renault have scored just six points thanks to Kevin Magnussen's only points finish and sit ninth, ahead of Manor and Sauber.
Vasseur claims the late decision to takeover the team, which used a Mercedes power unit, meant quickly modifying the car to work with its own power unit and that caused early troubles.
"Right now we are using a 2015-designed car that was built around a Mercedes engine, so when switching to a Renault engine we suffered from the very beginning," Vasseur told the official Formula 1 website.
Rather than using an evolution of the RS.16 which hasn't performed well, Renault will look back to the E23 as the base for its 2017 car, revealed Vasseur.
"It is a fact that we are not building the 2017 car based on the 2016 one, but on the 2015 car – and that is a lot of catching-up.
"2017 holds a good opportunity for us. Right now it is a bit stressful to manage such a huge gap based on the structure that we have but we are working hard on it."
Discussion about this post