How serious is the threat to Renault's F1 future?

From the moment Renault had Daniel Ricciardo's signature on a contract for 2019, the team's Formula 1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul accepted that his job would never be the same again.

Not from an immediate performance perspective, because both the team and seven-time grand prix winner Ricciardo knew this season would be a building block for bigger and brighter things for the future. Instead, what changed for Renault that day was that external expectations increased, and certainly far exceeded anything it thought was realistic for this year.

Suddenly, not beating Ricciardo's old team Red Bull would be viewed by some fans as a disappointment - even though Renault never said a word about being able to finish any higher than fourth place in the constructors' championship.

This was something Abiteboul referenced when Autosport spoke to him recently - that the team's challenge has been made so much harder by external forces.

"It is a tough season, and it is by far the most difficult season that I have personally lived because of the level of expectation," he said. "But I don't think we announced that, and I don't think we set it ourselves directly. We always said our target was P4, and clearly we are not there, we are P5.

"But I think through our acts, and in particular Daniel, through our investment, through some of the recruitment, many people started to think that there were higher expectations. And that was not really the case. Still, we have under delivered, but people have overestimated what were the actual expectations and actual target, which meant that the gap between the two is big."

This season has certainly been what can at best be called a character-building campaign for everyone at the team.

A combination of early-season poor reliability, a sprinkle of bad luck, some headaches in getting on top of the aerodynamic sensitivity of its car, updates that did not work as well as hoped for, windtunnel downtime, and more recently disqualification from the Japanese GP, have all had Renault up against the ropes at times.

All too often in F1, though, it never rains but it pours, and that spate of challenges now has the the backdrop of some big questions being asked by Renault's parent company about remaining in grand prix racing.

As part of its deal for better commercial rights, Renault made a commitment to stay in F1 at least as an engine supplier until 2021. With no customers to supply, such a commitment is no longer a realistic factor

The arrest of former Renault-Nissan alliance CEO Carlos Ghosn last year has prompted a company shake-up, and Renault's 2017-2022 'Drive the Future' strategy - which included a commitment to F1 - will be re-evaluated to see how much is taken forward. So, in the same week that Renault's interim CEO Clotilde Delbos told an investors' teleconference that F1 was 'on the table' for review, it certainly was not ideal that the manufacturer was grabbing headlines for being thrown out of the Japanese GP.

"I can't deny it, it doesn't help," Abiteboul said of that timing. "But in my opinion that is minimal against a number of news [stories] that are happening in today's world, in the automotive world, in the F1 world."

Some were all too quick to make comparisons between the current saga and the sequence of events, triggered by the 2008 Crashgate scandal, that paved the way for Renault's most recent F1 exit in '10.

As well as the poor timing of the Suzuka disqualification, the loss of McLaren as a customer team has also changed Renault's dynamic for 2021.

As part of its deal to get better commercial rights terms for its F1 return in 2016, Renault made a commitment to stay in F1 at least as an engine supplier until '21. This was a way of then F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone ensuring some long-term power unit supply security.

But now, with Renault having no customers, such a commitment is no longer a realistic factor as it could theoretically walk away without it impacting any third party.

The current issue is more about costs than a one-off race disqualification. Renault's 1.6% fall in group revenue and a sales reduction of 4.4% in the last quarter are evidence of increasingly challenging times.

In such situations it is easy for people to think that a drop in profits means that apparent luxuries, such as F1 programmes, must to be dropped. But sometimes the opposite is true and a road car manufacturer in such a state needs to do more such marketing activities to boost its image.

The debate about the F1 team's future certainly played a part in Renault's decision not to take the Japan disqualification to the FIA's International Court of Appeal.

Although a lot of ambiguity about the FIA's decision to disqualify a car on sporting grounds, even though it was found to fully comply with the technical regulations, remains, Renault wanted to avoid dragging the matter out. With heads down, time quickly moves on in F1 - already the talk is of Ricciardo's impressive lengthy hard-tyre-shod stint in Mexico, rather than a looming legal showdown in Paris.

The key, really, is how much bang for buck Renault gets back for its F1 investment.

On the negative side, the reality of the 2021 budget cap not being as low as some teams had hoped for means Renault's spending needs are going to have to increase in the short-term if it is to have any hope of catching F1's big three.

Renault's 2018 accounts, the most recent it has logged, showed it made a loss of £7.4million pounds last year. That's not anything to be particularly worried about considering the marketing benefits of F1 involvement. Also the fact that there has been considerable investment at Enstone - totalling £34.6m in 2016 and '17 - means that is not so easy to throw away for no return.

Ending an F1 project is no easy task, and Renault will be mindful that by doing so it would be throwing away not only the massive investment it has made, but also a much brighter potential future from 2021

But even if budgets do go up, the relative impact on the team will rest on how much commercial rights income it achieves. All the indications suggest that things will be better for those teams that did not enjoy the bonuses given to the privileged few.

One of the good things for Abiteboul is that Renault's new management team are no strangers to the F1 project and the reasons for its previously commitment.

"As the CFO [Delbos] was sitting in the executive committee that has made all the decisions related to the modern involvement of Renault in F1, including the return as a full team in F1," said Abiteboul.

"The other two, Jose-Vicente de los Mozos and Olivier Murguet are also members of the executive committee since a long time, and therefore have been part of all the decisions that we have made recently. They are not sitting on the board of the team, they maybe are coming less frequently than some other persons, but I can tell you that they know extremely well what we are doing, and the reasons why we are in the sport."

Calling time on an F1 project is certainly no easy task, and Renault will be mindful that by doing so it would be throwing away not only the massive investment it has made, but also a much brighter potential future from 2021. What regrets does Honda have over what it did in '08?

In theory there are buyers out there, and it is regularly suggested that Dmitry Mazepin is looking around to see what opportunities there are to get involved, after his attempt to buy Force India did not happen last year.

But could Abiteboul's best bit of good luck actually be that F1 is making such a big change in 2021, one that offers not only an improved financial platform for the teams but also the potential to do much better in competitive terms?

In Mexico last weekend, Liberty was due to present commercial offers from 2021 to the teams. While the exact details remain secret for now, Abiteboul suggested there was some confidence that the income/cost balance for two year's time was much better than the current offer.

"If everything is better than what we have now, I don't see why we would get to a different conclusion from the one we've made in 2015," he said. "Yes, the market has changed, the sporting results are what they are.

"But most important is can we project ourselves with confidence in that period of time, with good results at reasonable cost? In my opinion, what we will get out of the 2021 measures will go in the right direction, to answer each one of these questions positively."

There are no guarantees yet, but even after all that's been thrown at them this year, Renault and Abiteboul can still see the light at the end of the tunnel.