The question marks over the new Renault

This is going to be a big season for the Renault works team. It has lost its leading customer (Red Bull) to Honda, so now it's up to Team Enstone to show it can take up the mantle and lead the Renault-powered brigade.

Renault was fourth in the constructors' championship last year, which was financially a valuable achievement, but the gap to Red Bull in the standings was 297 points. That's the equivalent of roughly seven one-two finishes, so it's an arduous task to close that gap.

Another problem is that teams such as Racing Point, Sauber, McLaren and Haas are all gunning for that coveted fourth, so Renault needs to do a lot better and score a lot more points.

In Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo, Renault has the drivers - so there's nothing lacking there. Give them the tools and they will bring home the results.

During the winter, Renault made a comment that everything other than the power steering is new. Everything for a new car should be new, but it is the concept and how it all works together that is critical to overall performance. Within the detail of every component is the potential to save some weight, which would give Renault the opportunity to alter the weight distribution and also lower the centre of gravity by placing that weight lower down.

Overall, the new car doesn't look dramatically different from its predecessor but that mainly comes from the paint scheme. When it comes to performance, the devil is in the detail. There are a couple of nice pieces, and a couple that I would question.

The leading edge of the sidepods comes from the Ferrari concept. Most teams will head in that direction since it opens the gap between the leading edge of the sidepod and the front tyre, allowing the various turning vanes more opportunity to optimise the airflow in that area.

To join Mercedes and Ferrari's club means Renault needs to spend what is required to get there

Looking at the front wing in general, it doesn't look like Renault has been struggling for front downforce to balance the car. The way the flaps sweep downwards as they go outwards suggests they have given up some potential front end load. For me, that would be a little alarming because it suggests it doesn't have the rear downforce to require that extra front load.

These cars struggle for front end grip in medium- and low-speed corners, so they need as much front wing as possible. The cars then rely on the front wing stall characteristics to give a small understeer balance in the fast corners. Renault has a very long-chord front wing main plane that, when it stalls, will be like a light switch losing a lot of front load. This can very easily lead to what is called porpoising, which is when the front of the car starts bouncing at high speed.

One nice area is the airbox intake. Having it as high up as possible and oval-shaped will reduce the negative influence on the airflow coming off the driver's helmet and the halo. It also improves the airflow around the sides of the engine cover so it should improve the performance of the rear wing.

Renault is, in effect, the third works team and so its performance will be judged against Mercedes and Ferrari, although you can probably add Red Bull into that list with its works Honda engines. To join that club means it needs to spend what is required to get there.

It can't hold back and say, 'Aren't we doing a great job relative to our spend?' The whole reason for being involved in F1 is for the product promotion it gives to a very diverse audience. Being in the middle of the smaller 'privateer' teams won't do that and the people at the top will very quickly start posing awkward questions.

If Renault is ever going to challenge at the front it has to move forward this year. If that is only by closing the points gap significantly to the top three, then that might just be acceptable. If it drops off a couple of places in the constructors' championship then that is not.

Jake Boxall-Legge on Renault's curious approach

There's a gap that Renault has to close in 2019. Despite being last year's "Class B" champion, it was well off the pace of the top three teams and spent most of its time batting off the advances of Haas and the team then known as Force India.

Now Renault has no choice but to demonstrate a sizeable leap forward, especially as its Formula E team has been passed over to Nissan.

Looking at the launch specification of the RS19, the optimistic view to take is that Renault is hiding something, and doesn't fancy revealing its hand just yet. If that's not the case, then there's definite similarities between this year's car and last year's model, even despite the team's claims of an all-new car.

But let's look at what we've been given. In launch spec at least, the front wing is incredibly curious. Unlike the Toro Rosso - unveiled on Monday - which appeared to use the maximum of the bounding boxes, Renault's solution appears to be a compressed outboard section, while the inboard arrangement is fanned out with wide slot gaps.

This seems to be an extreme solution to restore the outwashing lost to the new regulations, restoring the performance of the floor as the effects of the tyre wake are less pronounced. To follow what Gary Anderson has mentioned, the front-wing flap adjuster and reinforcement brackets are also angled outboard to promote that, and the endplate certainly more than encourages the direction of airflow around the front tyres.

The mainplane is also a partial spoon shape, allowing vortices to propagate under the wing at the endplate that can be carried around the front face of the tyre. Previously, teams could employ intricate footplates to manage that, but the new rules on curvature mean that those vortices are going to be a bit more free-form. Guiding them away from the rotating wheel will be key, otherwise the rotating tyre can "burst" a vortex and kick up a greater pocket of turbulent air.

The idiosyncratic air intake results in a rather fat-looking engine cover

Unlike the rest of the 2019 front wings seen so far, the second element is detached from the mainplane rather than included as a split up to the neutral section in the centre. This offers perhaps a little more control of the inboard vortex, an important factor in the current ruleset in managing the tyre wake further downstream.

The bargeboard section has also been exposed to the winds of change, using the new space available to bring the aerodynamic components further forward. The main bargeboard flares outwardly at the top, picking up the airflow from the lowest suspension mounting points and providing it with a bit of guidance around the bottom of the chassis bulkhead. There's also a smattering of serrations to pack up some vortices, where the raised sections further back are able to shepherd them around the side of the car.

Evidently, the high sidepod inlets are in season this year, offering a pronounced undercut for the bargeboards to work airflow around. Like the other cars launched so far, Renault has used the crash structures to accommodate further aerodynamic geometry, and as such Renault's engineers have reshaped the "aerocat" sidepod winglets - devised to manage the wake shed from the tyre.

This year the sidepods are a lot tighter, suggesting that Renault has made advances with its cooling over the off-season. Without having to cater for Red Bull, whose demands perhaps became the millstone around the neck of the engine department in Viry-Chatillon, Renault has perhaps been unshackled - more free to create a package on its own terms. The undercuts follow along to the rear of the car, sweeping underneath the openings at the rear used for cooling.

The idiosyncratic air intake results in a rather fat-looking engine cover. Rather than sucking in the sides, evidently the team has been able to collect the requisite flow attachment to minimise the rear wing blockage. The mirrors also follow in the current trend of having them as outboard as possible, using them for as much aerodynamic benefit as possible - given the choice, engineers would simply choose to run without mirrors.

With simple rear wing endplates, punctuated by nothing more than a leading edge slot and strakes on the bottom portion, Renault has plenty of growing room. Using swan-neck rear wing mounts is a contemporary touch, but is complemented by a small monkey seat between them to make use of the space available above the exhaust. There's also a clear foray into the world of rake angles, hoping to create as much downforce at the underside as possible by accelerating airflow at the front of the floor.

Of the cars launched so far, this is one that's perhaps expected to change the most between launch specification and what will actually hit the ground in testing and at Albert Park. And if it doesn't change too overtly, then Renault's attempts to draw closer to the front three can be described as conservative at best.