Boullier targets more podiums for Renault in 2011

The Renault F1 Team made good progress this season and found its way back to the front, collecting three podiums in the process. Eric Boullier hopes the team can follow this trend next year and fight for the podium on a more regular basis.

"Ambition for next year is to clearly be able to position our cars on the podium more regularly, which would allow us to grab maybe some wins," he told Renault’s official podcast. "If we can put the team as a ‘podium fighter’ for the constructors’ championship I will be very happy.”

"Eighth [place] last year, fifth this year, but clearly if we could be fourth – or even better in the top three – that would be very great."

Although Renault kept developing its 2010 car to the end, it also managed to get a good head-start on its 2011 challenger, and Boullier is optimistic that this will pay off.

"I think that we had a very early start for the new car and because we have, I hope, learned from the past mistakes, especially for the KERS, it should be promising and we should get some advantage by having very well prepared for the next year," he said.

He played down the chances of the move to Pirelli tyres shaking up the order and giving teams like Renault a chance to topple the current front-runners.

"I don’t think it will level the field. I would rather say it can create some strange surprises," said Boullier. "Obviously it is new tyres, [but] even if we have like every team on the grid a group of engineers working flat out on this you can expect some surprises in the first couple of races that some teams will understand the tyres and how they work.”

"It’s not levelling the playing field; it’s creating more dispersion actually. But I think all the F1 teams are so professional that it [the usual order] will stay the same, or be back to normal very early”, he concluded.