Formula One regulations at the time permitted either a 3.0-litre naturally-aspirated engine or a 1.5-litre supercharged or turbocharged alternative. While the rest of the field used the Ford Cosworth DFV V8 or naturally-aspirated flat-12 designs from Ferrari and Alfa Romeo, Renault chose to pursue the turbocharged route. The manufacturer drew on experience gained from its 2.0-litre turbocharged V6 engine used in sports car racing — a programme that culminated in a second-place finish at Le Mans in 1977 and an outright victory in 1978, demonstrating that turbocharged engines could be both powerful and reliable given sufficient development.
The RS01 was never intended as a fully competitive racing package from the outset. It was conceived as a development vehicle, with Jabouille serving as both chief development driver and race driver. The engine block was constructed from cast iron to withstand the elevated pressures of forced induction, while the chassis was kept deliberately simple to focus engineering resources on the power unit.
The RS01 earned the nickname "the yellow teapot" from rival teams, a reference to its tendency to retire in a cloud of white smoke as its turbo engine expired. Despite the unreliability, the car underwent rapid and continuous development across the 1977 and 1978 seasons. The turning point came at the 1978 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, where Jabouille scored the RS01's first championship points with a fourth-place finish.
One of the RS01's most significant performances came at the start of the 1979 season at the South African Grand Prix in Kyalami, a high-altitude circuit where the thinner air reduced the power output of naturally-aspirated engines by approximately 20 percent. Under these conditions, Jabouille put the Renault on pole position — the first pole for a turbocharged car in Formula One history. At altitude, the turbochargers continued to supply compressed air at near sea-level density, giving the RS01 a pronounced performance advantage over the Cosworth DFV-powered field.
A key technical milestone during development was overcoming the turbo lag that plagued early runs. Engineers addressed this by adopting twin turbochargers, reducing the delay between throttle application and power delivery, and making the engine more driveable in race conditions.
The RS01 and Renault's turbocharged programme had a transformative effect on Formula One. Within three years of the car's debut, most major engine manufacturers had committed to turbocharged designs. Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Honda, and Porsche all developed turbocharged engines for Formula One during the early 1980s, triggering an arms race in power output that defined the sport through the turbo era of 1977 to 1988.
The car demonstrated that a manufacturer willing to pursue a technically unconventional path could challenge the established order even without immediate success. Renault's willingness to absorb seasons of unreliability to develop the technology paid off when the team's successor car, the Renault RS10, used the same turbocharged engine concept to score Renault's first Formula One victory at the 1979 French Grand Prix at Dijon-Prenois — driven by Jabouille, the same engineer-driver who had persevered through the RS01's troubled development years.