Renault eyes top three this season

The Enstone-based outfit is due to unveil its 2011 challenger in Valencia on January 31, and there are high hopes that the car will help the outfit make further progress on the steps it delivered throughout last year.

The team's chief operating officer Patrick Louis has said that the ambition is for a top-three finish in the title chase - with technical director James Allison hinting about an aggressive design to its new car.

Speaking in a pre-season video interview on the Group Lotus website, with the sportscar manufacturer being the team's title sponsor this year, Allison said: "This time of year is a heady mix of both thrilling excitement of finding out, confirming that all your plans are coming to fruition, and also abject terror that you will not deliver the thing in time.

"Anyone who follows the sport will have seen that words like aggressive [and] brave are being bandied around across several of the teams this year for their solutions.

"I believe that we have chosen a direction that is really on the brave end of brave."

Renault team principal Eric Boullier told AUTOSPORT last weekend that the team was hoping to win races this year - and he admitted in the Lotus video that the pressure was on the outfit to deliver on those ambitions.

"We want to win and we want to be successful in Formula 1," Boullier explained. "The more attention we can get from the fans and the Lotus people and from all our sponsors, we put ourselves into a pressure mode because we have to win.

"We know now we will be much more competitive than last year. We don't know yet obviously what the other teams, and the other forces, will be in F1 - but we already know we will be much stronger."