Renault plans to recruit top staff from rival F1 teams on comeback

The French manufacturer has taken over a Lotus team short on personnel in the wake of a swathe of redundancies forced upon it after making staggering losses in 2013 of almost £65million.

Asked how many new staff had been taken on since Renault confirmed its return as a works team in December, managing director Cyril Abiteboul said:

"Very few for now.

"We want to make sure we recruit good people, and usually good people are not available very quickly because they have to be placed on gardening leave, and you can't get them for six months, or sometimes a year.

"Right now we have 490 people in Enstone. The plan is to grow to 650 by the end of 2017.

"The biggest teams have 800 people, and we think we will be in a position to compete against those - and I'm referring to Mercedes, Red Bull - with 650 people at Enstone.

"How we will do this is by sharing a lot of activities between Viry and Enstone.

"We believe we will be able to match the other teams, even though we will have fewer people on site."

With Renault back in F1 as a manufacturer in its own right, and not just an engine supplier, Abiteboul is convinced it will be able to recruit strong people from its rivals.

"To attract people from competitors you need to have a story," said Abiteboul.

"Now there is a landmark to start telling the story about Renault, the plans, the management, the financial resources, the partners, the long-term prospects.

"Now we have a plan, so hopefully we will be able to attract the talent."

Abiteboul insists Renault's resources at its engine facility in Viry-Chatillon are sufficient, countering comments to the contrary in the past from Red Bull.

"Frankly, we feel we have more than enough resources in Viry," he said.

"I know the perception from some people, some of the things said by Red Bull, was that we don't have enough resources.

"We have enough financial and human resources. It's about technical leadership, it's about know-how, skills.

"What happened at Viry is we had to recruit an awful lot of people for this new regulation [the 1.6-litre V6 engines].

"The problem is when you have new, young people, fresh from university, you have to train them.

"Now they are trained, up to speed, motivated for this new project, and they will have more than enough to do the job we need to do."