Renault team boss Federeic Vasseur doubts 2017's regulation changes will lead to a wholesale reshuffle of the pecking order as some have predicted.
Next year's cars are set to be faster and wider, with Pirelli currently testing a thicker set of tyres for the season. Previous regulation changes have served to shake up the order, such as in 2009 or 2014, but Vasseur says there are no guarantees that will be the case next season.
"It won't totally reshuffle the cards," he said. "Contrary to what you might think, I am not sure the new regulations will be such a big advantage for Renault because I think they will favour well-oiled structures with reactive staff, while we are still in the process of re-building the team.
"What can happen though is that teams fighting for positions in this year's constructors' championship are tempted to still allocate resources to improve their current chassis and find an extra tenth for the upcoming races.
"On the other hand, for a team like Mercedes, whose place has been more or less secured for some time, it's easier to shift its attention towards 2017. So it will not really reshuffle the order, structurally at least.
"Now, the big difference can come from the range of technical choices and philosophies favoured by the teams. We saw it at the time of Brawn GP [in 2009] when several squads had gone for double diffusers and the others had to catch up. This is where you can have the edge."
Renault has struggled on its return to the grid as a manufacturer this year but Vasseur is comfortable with the decisions the team made to focus largely on 2017's changes.
"We had two choices: we could concentrate on 2016 and spend a lot of energy to progress and play catch up, or we could focus on 2017 very early, knowing there were major regulation changes in the pipeline. I don't know what happened at other teams but we switched to next year very early. We'll see how it goes."