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Daniel Ricciardo is confident that Renault has a lot of pace, but it is up to him to extract the speed from the car.
The Australian has had a tough start to the 2019 season with his new team, failing to score points at the opening two races of the season.
Ricciardo was able to get further experience with the R.S. 19 at the post-Bahrain test, but admits that he is still coming to terms with the car and is hopeful that he will find more comfort soon.
“I’m certainly getting there in terms of extracting the maximum and getting more comfortable,” he said. “These things do take time, but it’s good to iron out these details.
“We’ll get there soon and sure enough and I’m confident we’re heading in the right direction. We showed signs of that over the race weekend, going from a struggle on Friday, followed by an improvement on Saturday to being in and amongst it on Sunday.
“The car clearly has pace, but for me, it’s about finding all of it. I feel there’s a lot more to come.”
Renault suffered a double DNF at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Ricciardo and teammate Nico Hulkenberg coming to a halt at almost the same point towards the end of the race.
The team's managing director Cyril Abiteboul says that the team will approach the China weekend with caution as it hopes to relieve its reliability woes.
“Our overall competitiveness is good enough for our drivers to be racing in the top 10 and closer to the top teams than last year,” he said. “But we have suffered from reliability issues. We move onto China with caution, but also with a resolution to really get the season going.”
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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Replies (3)
Login to replyboudy
Posts: 1,168
At the moment it looks like that the Hulk has the measure of him. Ricciardo will need to improve in order to make an impact. Sergio looks to be correct at the moment.
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
No surprises here yet. Hulk is no slouch and Daniel just got there. I don't get where all the skepticism about Daniel comes from. He has a stellar record that included beating Vettel by some margin.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
He'll come around, Ric is a great driver. However I am a bit smug that this is the start we got. I was never quite certain why people thought Ric would steamroll the Hulk and was the clear 1st driver now.