Renault began the season on a high, running at the top end of the grid alongside Ferrari, Williams and McLaren. But by mid season, it all seemed to go pear shaped. With yet another controversial decision on their drivers line up, more reliability issues looming and still no podium finish, the French automakers are chalking down 2002 as a year in transition. Technical director Mike Gascoyne explains to Will Gray where they are heading and why this season's result doesn't count. Exclusive for Atlas F1

The Renault team arrived back in Formula One this year after a 16-year break with a cautious but positive approach and a plan to move into a position to take on the best for World Championship success. The corporate dream, which glossed over the team at the Paris launch, hid a driven desire to succeed with an innovative engine concept that had embarrassed the team's hierarchy in its inauguration year with Benetton in 2001.

Then, the car was off the pace, fighting for back of the grid spots with Minardi, and making everyone wonder why on earth Renault wanted to put their name to such a project. But out of the bad came signs of promise as performances improved towards the end of last year and the team headed to Australia at the start of this season with a new identity and a new, much-heightened goal.

The lofty ambitions were proven to be close to the mark when the season kicked off as drivers Jenson Button and Jarno Trulli, who joined the team from Jordan in the off-season, showed early promise. While Trulli took time to settle, Button was on it right from the start, desperate to make up for a dismal 2001 season that saw him blown away by teammate Giancarlo Fisichella virtually in every race.

Four races in, Renault were on a healthy seven points and looking like they could take the fight to McLaren-Mercedes and Williams-BMW as the increasingly dominant Ferrari team moved out into the distance. As they head into the final race this weekend, at Suzuka in Japan, Renault lie in an acceptable fourth, but can only claim around one third of the points tally McLaren-Mercedes have scored, while Williams-BMW have secured four times as many.

"Overall, I think we performed at a consistent level and we just let ourselves down with reliability," said the team's technical director Mike Gascoyne. "We should have scored 35 points. That would have been my target - 35 points I would have been happy with. If we end up with 22 or 25 points then yeah, if you look at the missed opportunities that is where we should have been. We should have been 35 or 40 points and closer to McLaren."

Gascoyne readily admits that his team, led also by director of engineering Pat Symonds, have failed to come to grips with the reliability issues that saw Trulli retire from the opening three races. In all, up to Suzuka, the team had picked up 13 non-finishes, with 10 of those down to mechanical problems. Ferrari, meanwhile, have only three retirements in total and Williams just three more than the ultra-reliable Italian outfit.

But Renault, in fact, have the same number of mechanical failures as McLaren, so their failings cannot solely be blamed on reliability. In fact, from race pace it is clear to all that Renault are no longer challenging McLaren in the way they were at the start of the year.

McLaren can boast nine podium finishes this season, six for Scot David Coulthard and another three for young Finn Kimi Raikkonen, and although in the early part it seemed a question of not if, but when would Button claim his first podium, not once yet has he managed to spray the champagne.

But the team's failure to keep up with the Mercedes-powered team, which Gascoyne admitted have seen them lose ground by about one quarter of a second, seems little bother to him because the work going on behind the scenes has been a success that will only be measurable in performance next year.

"We have been focusing on things that are really different that you struggle to do in the yearly race and new car cycle and I think we have been really successful in that," said Gascoyne. "That hasn't done anything for how we performed this year but it will be the key to challenging the top three in years to come.

"The important thing when I joined two years ago was to set Renault up as a big team because Benetton had slipped from being that and that was what we had been doing all the work on so it is the future that is important for us not what's gone by.

"It was important to ensure we finished in the top four in the Championship while making sure we got the team set up properly to challenge for the World Championship in future years. I think we have achieved all of that but overall we would have liked to be closer to the top three teams.

"We had to finish fourth but our real aim is to be challenging for the World Championship in 2005 and beyond. You only do that by putting in place all the long-term things so ultimately, provided we are successful in that, it doesn't matter where we are at the end of this year."

The fact that Ferrari have been so reliably dominant this season has left their rival teams in a bit of bother. The Italian team have scored eight one-two finishes this season and Schumacher has claimed a podium place at every event. That means only 23 of the 48 podium places - less than 50 percent - have been available for the other teams, with the top three spots more readily available in the early part of the season.

Renault started the season on the back foot but their rapid rate of development shot them into contention with Williams and McLaren. As the season wore on, however, the newcomers' failure to get to grips with reliability along with a few off-colour days, took its toll and left them losing ground.

"Ferrari's reliability has been phenomenal," said Gascoyne. "Coulthard was celebrating like mad on the podium in Indianapolis because he got third. But with Ferrari on such form, that's the only position you are racing for. In the first part of the season, there were enough non-finishes - Barrichello had a lot of them - that you only needed the odd McLaren or Williams to have a problem and you could race for a podium because you are the next team.

"By mid season, people's reliability, ourselves probably excluded, was pretty good. When you have got two Ferraris finishing first and second practically every race, you have then got to beat Williams and McLaren to get a podium.

"We have definitely been behind them. To start with we were quite close to McLaren, but I think they made some large performance gains in the engine. They were perhaps a quarter of a second in front of us and maybe moved to half a second in front of us with that.

"But I think that as all the teams improved it is the gap to fifth place that has grown and I think we have kept constant with the top teams. I would say the Ferrari is the best car in all departments but our chassis probably rates alongside McLaren as the second best chassis out there - ahead of the Williams.

"Williams have obviously got the best engine and McLaren have a better engine than us and probably at the start of the year that is what was holding them back and why we were able to race them for the first five or so races.

"In some respects our development also slowed because we have put a lot of effort into the 2003 car and we are ahead of the game with that. We have had times this year when we have not scored points, but actually if you look at the performance of the car I think we have been pretty competitive on all circuits.

"We have been the fourth quickest car, we have qualified seventh and eighth most places. We are fourth in the Championship, our drivers are seventh and eighth in the World Championship, you know, that's where we are. Percentage wise if you look at the quickest Michelin runner you have to say at the last race, in Indy, where we were 0.6 seconds off the quickest, that was closer than we were at the start of the year."

If ever there was a reminder of just how far Renault has actually come since Benetton's final season last year, which everyone in the team admitted was a total disaster, then it is in the numbers on the two yellow and light-blue machines.

This year, Trulli and Button have been racing car numbers 14 and 15, having to look across British American Racing Honda, Jordan Honda, Sauber, Williams and McLaren to see the red livery of the Ferrari team they were actually targeting. Now they only have Williams and McLaren in their way.

But for Gascoyne, there are surprisingly few high points in a long season that he describes as another one of transition for the dual-based team. For him, it is one that has not lived up to his expectations and hopes, yet one that has proven success is on its way.

The media-generated hype of Renault's arrival as a brand new Formula One superpower was carefully controlled because even with the resources available at their Enstone and Viry-Chatillon bases in England and France, it was clear to them that they were never going to achieve such heights immediately.

"I can't say there were any great high points," said Gascoyne. "I was disappointed in Monaco because I think that Jarno could have qualified on the first couple of rows and picked up a podium. It was also disappointing not to get the podium in Malaysia for Jenson.

"But the most disappointing thing for me is that the circuits where we are good are the true aero circuits, those with high speed corners - Spa, Silverstone, Barcelona, Suzuka - and the three we have been at so far, we have not scored any points at.

"Then again, if you actually look at it, Barcelona we were running fourth and fifth, very competitively, and both cars broke. Spa, both engines broke but Jarno again racing in front of a Williams. And Silverstone, until it rained, if you look at the first ten laps, we were right with both McLarens and Williams. In fact, after the pit-stops we called that right and we were third and fourth or something - but we had to put Michelin wet tyres on."

Gascoyne openly allows the team and their engineers to take the rap for the failure to score points as he, along with the whole of the Renault outfit, continues to place a priority on long-term ambition rather than short-term satisfaction.

That drive to eventually strip Ferrari of their hard-earned plaudits and finally, for the first time since the ambition was created with Renault's Formula One debut in 1977, to claim the world title, has no limits. The budget is healthy, and the cut-throat ambition is unwavering and, at times, apparently heartless.

At the French Grand Prix in Magny-Cours, the team's home race and a place where their successful return to Formula One should have been celebrated, they sensibly took the opportunity to reveal their plans to go forward for the 2003 season. The decision to announce that young Spaniard Fernando Alonso would graduate to the race team to drive alongside Trulli and in place of Button may have displayed the desire to go forward, but it did little for the motivation of Button.

The young Briton, in his third season of Formula One but still only 22, had scored ten points to Trulli's four and, after remaining loyal to the team when they produced a disappointing car in 2001, he was hoping to be retained to push them to greater things.

As if to prove a point, while Trulli failed to finish again at Magny-Cours he scored a point for sixth, one day after the team announced they would not retain him after the end of the season. But Gascoyne insists it was what they had to do to move forward.

"Jenson obviously had a difficult season in 2001 when he was thoroughly outperformed by Giancarlo," remembered Gascoyne. "He needed to re-focus and all that, and he did that very effectively. Over the winter he dropped some of the entourage, came testing by himself and really got his head down and certainly in the first half of the season he was very strong.

"Those performances secured his future in Formula One because if he hadn't have done that I don't think he would have had a long-term future in Formula One, so I am very pleased for him. There were no politics in the decision. Everyone used all these words like 'politics' and 'sacked'...he's not been...he had a two year contract that came up and we, as a team, had to review long-term who we thought would be the best drivers to win races for us in 2003, 2004 and beyond.

"We had a firm contract with Jenson after his first year where really, if you had had a choice, you would have kept Giancarlo. But we had a contract with him which we couldn't break. We had to honour it. That was the case with Jarno. Forget the relative race performances, that was the case. But also we did believe in Jarno and I think he has shown why we believe in him over the last few races.

"So it then comes a choice with Alonso. All this crap talked about Flavio and all of that...Alonso was signed for Renault two years ago, not by Flavio. Flavio manages the Renault drivers. He was signed on a long-term Renault contract.

"Now, if you believe Fernando is going to be a future World Champion, and I believe he is - he has the spark and he showed it when he was with Minardi, he showed it with us in testing - if he is going to be ready to win races in 2004, then in 2003 he has got to race in a competitive car.

"Now, we are not going to put him in a Ferrari, Williams or McLaren, so if he wants to race in a top car and be racing for points and podiums then he has got to drive ours. There is no point putting him in a Minardi again and racing at the back. He has got to learn to race at the front - and that is the choice you are making."

Button was forced to suffer short-term pain to offer Renault the potential of long-term gain. The uncompromising move was strongly criticised by Button supporters, who believed he was finally showing the potential that Frank Williams saw in him to bring him to Formula One two years ago. But it was all part of the Renault plan.

Long-term is what it is all about. That is how Ferrari have become so dominant. And that is how Renault plan to do so in the future. Structurally, they are one of the teams most concentrated on the next rather than the now. And Gascoyne's stay-away approach to the final races of the season has displayed just that.

As if to confirm the season is over as far as Renault are concerned, Gascoyne has chosen to spend much of the second half of his year away from the track, working on the future. The early desires of podiums and champagne this season have faded, and Gascoyne believes there is something at the factory that tastes rather better.

"I think this has been a preparation year," said Gascoyne, sitting in his Enstone office plotting next season's attack as the rest of the team headed out to Japan for the final race of 2002. "We achieved what we wanted, which was fourth in the Championship.

"The morale is very good within the team and I think we have got all the right people in place. I think the 2003 car will be the first car that you are going to see where Renault has been able, in overall terms, to get ahead of the game. The 201 was a survival season with the new engine and all of that and really we have been playing catch-up every since, certainly in engine terms. The 2003 car is the first time where the engine and chassis has been truly integrated.

"I think you saw in the second half of the 2001 season us gearing up to become Renault but I think the 202 has just been a development of that. It is the 203 - or the 23 as it is going to be called - where you will see us actually take a step forward.

"We should have been closer this year, but ultimately that is immaterial as long as we make the steps forward we need to make for 2003 and beyond. Everyone keeps talking about McLaren and Williams challenging Ferrari. It is my job to make sure it is actually us."