Frederic Vasseur has said that Renault are looking to re-create their glory of the past by building towards success with a promising new driver.
The French carmaker returned to full works team status for 2016 with Kevin Magnussen, a formerly McLaren-backed Dane, and the 2014 GP2 champion Jolyon Palmer.
Nipping at the race duo's heels are Esteban Ocon, the team's highly-rated reserve driver, and the new SMP Racing-backed tester Sergey Sirotkin.
"The best thing now is to find a driver who will be the world champion in, say, 2020 and 2021," Vasseur, Renault team boss, is quoted by as saying by Russia's Championat.
"So it is necessary to start work now. If you look at the past, something like what Red Bull did with [Sebastian] Vettel, Renault with [Fernando] Alonso and Benetton with [Michael] Schumacher.
"But we need a few years for such a cooperation to gain momentum."
Indeed, the Frenchman said that he doubts even the radical rule changes for 2017 will give Renault the opportunity to immediately leap up the grid.
"It's not just about the rules but the structure of the team," said Vasseur. "Yes, a rule change could give us an advantage, but I don't think we can immediately reduce the gap."
Renault have picked up six points so far this year.
