No team outside of Formula 1’s current Big Three — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — has won an F1 race since the first race of the 2013 season. Through this year’s Brazilian Grand Prix, that’s an incredible run of 117 races since Kimi Räikkönen’s 2013 win for Lotus at Australia. That said, at least four teams — Renault, Haas F1 Team, Force ­India and McLaren — all say their time competing for race wins is right around the next twisting turn of your favorite Formula 1 circuit. The smart money might just be on Renault to be the team to force its way to the big kids’ table. “Wait a little bit. We’re going to be on the podium again soon,” Renault Sport Racing president Jerome Stoll told Autoweek at the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. “It takes some time because we know for all teams it took five to six years to go on the podium. When you look at Mercedes, it took five years; Red Bull as well. Ferrari did not win a championship for the last 10 years — they are racing, they are fighting, but they have not won a championship.” Renault is wrapping up its third season as a Formula 1 constructor since ending a four-year absence and taking over the former Lotus F1 team in late 2015. Renault finished a dismal ninth in the constructors’ standings with just eight points its first year back in 2016. Last year, the team jumped up to sixth in the standings with 57 points.

This year, Renault -- with drivers Nico Hülkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr. -- has all but locked up the fourth spot in the constructors’ standings with 114 points -- double last year’s total and 24 points ahead of American Haas F1 Team with just the season-ending race from Abu Dhabi races left on the schedule. Lotus, Stoll points out, didn’t leave Renault a whole lot to work with heading into 2016. “It’s a very tough competition,” Stoll said. “At the very beginning, we said we have a five- to six-year journey to be on the podium. At the time we took over the Lotus team, they were bankrupt. We had to start from scratch.” Stoll added that there’s no real secret to the recipe for success in F1. Everyone has essentially the same playbook. It’s all about making the right calls. “The drivers of this competition are chassis, engine, driver,” Stoll said. “We set two years to reinvest, two years to fight for podiums and two years to fight for the championship. We are on this journey. We were P9 the first year. We were P6 last year, and we expect to be P4 this year.

“Next year, with a new driver—we were able to hire Daniel Ricciardo, which is part of our journey also, to have a top driver—this is exactly the journey, the step by step, I am implementing. And we are for the time being still on time.” Hülkenberg, who finished sixth at Grands Prix in Austin and Mexico City, is a career-best seventh in the drivers’ standings. He’ll pair with current Red Bull racer and seven-time F1 race winner Ricciardo, with Sainz moving to McLaren next year. The Renault camp believes the Ricciardo signing sends a message that the goals at Renault are higher than a “best of the rest” moniker. “It is true that there is still a big gap between four and two and one, obviously, but we know exactly where we have to close the gap,” Stoll said. “We have to close the gap with the driver, and we did it. Nobody expected us to get Ricciardo. We have to close the gap with the engine; we know exactly what to do. We have closed the gap with the chassis, and this surprisingly took the longest period of time. “It takes time to hire the good people and then for them to deliver the right thing and then for us to deliver the result. It’s a long story, but we know exactly where we go, how we want to go and I can promise you that next year with Ricciardo, we’re going to fight for some podiums. Maybe by chance, we’re going to deliver a podium. The year after, we have to be prepared to be on the podium.”

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