Following the 1983 season — in which the RE40 took four wins but narrowly lost the drivers' championship — Renault restructured its driver lineup. Prost had been sacked after publicly criticising the team and joined McLaren. Patrick Tambay, a two-time Grand Prix winner who had been at Ferrari alongside 1983 champion Nelson Piquet's primary rivals, joined from Maranello. Derek Warwick, highly rated after strong performances at Toleman, completed the pairing. A third car was entered at the final race of the season in Portugal for test driver Philippe Streiff.
The RE50 carried high expectations. Tambay and Warwick were considered a strong combination, and the car was expected to be at least as competitive as the RE40 had been under Prost.
The car was powered by the Renault EF4 turbocharged V6, quoted at 800 bhp. Despite the engine's power, fuel consumption proved the RE50's fundamental limitation. The 1984 season introduced a strict 220-litre fuel limit per race, with refuelling banned, and Renault never resolved the efficiency deficit that prevented either driver from running competitively to the end of most races. This problem extended to customer teams: Lotus, running the same Renault engine, faced similar challenges despite the efforts of designer Gérard Ducarouge, who had formerly worked at Renault.
A further weakness was the structural integrity of the car's carbon fibre monocoque. In crashes at both Dijon and Monaco, Warwick suffered leg injuries when suspension arms punched through the tub. At Monaco, Tambay crashed into Warwick's already-stricken car at the first corner and suffered a broken left leg. Both incidents underlined the fragility of a chassis that, while lighter than aluminium, had not been engineered with sufficient energy absorption in certain impact zones.
Despite the mechanical setbacks, the RE50 produced some creditable results. Tambay took pole position at the French Grand Prix at Dijon, led over half the race, and ultimately finished second behind eventual World Champion Niki Lauda in the McLaren-TAG. Warwick achieved a five-point-scoring season, including two second places, two thirds, and a fourth. Tambay scored four points finishes across the year.
The team scored no victories — the first Renault works season without a win since the RS01 in 1978. Warwick finished seventh in the Drivers' Championship with 23 points; Tambay eleventh with 11. The combined 34 points placed Renault fifth in the Constructors' Championship. Both drivers set one fastest lap each during the season.
The RE50 was replaced for 1985 by the RE60. Tambay and Warwick remained with the team, but the following season proved even more difficult. Warwick had been approached by Williams — who ran turbocharged Honda engines — about a 1985 drive, but chose to stay at Renault believing his championship prospects were better there. The decision proved costly: the RE60 was slower than the RE50 from its first tests, while the Williams FW10-Honda won four races that year and launched Nigel Mansell's winning career.
The RE50 marked the point at which Renault's original works programme began its terminal decline. Despite the power and pedigree of the EF4 engine, the team could not convert raw pace into results, and the fuel consumption problem that blunted the RE50 was never truly solved during the remaining years of the works effort.