Renault DP World F1 Team will be hoping for a similar point haul from the previous race in this weekend’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix held at Silverstone Circuit.
Daniel Ricciardo had a strong weekend finishing in fourth place, equalling his best ever finish for the French team.
Running in sixth for the majority of the race, Ricciardo got lucky when the front left wheels of Valtteri Bottas’sMercedes and Carlos Sainz Jr’s McLaren punctured in the dying laps of the race, promoting the Aussie to fourth and crossing the line just over one second behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Ricciardo added “We’ll be hoping for a similar result, that’s for sure. And, who knows, maybe we can! I think the weather looks to be hot again all weekend and that will bring some challenges. It was also very windy at Silverstone and that makes things tricky in a Formula 1 car.
“We’re heading a step softer on tyres, which will certainly be interesting. We don’t see that many two-stop races and this one should be a two-stopper, so we’ll see what happens there.
“The aim will be to nail our qualifying and see if we can sneak a little further up for the start. Our race pace has been good, so let’s see what we can do.”
Esteban Ocon also benefited from the drama of the last couple of laps. After running most of the race in ninth, stuck behind Lance Stroll, Ocon eventually overtook the Canadian on Lap 46. The tyre issues of Bottas and Sainz placed the two drivers behind Ocon, promoting him to sixth, his highest finish this year.
One thing the Frenchman has noticed that the team can improve on is qualifying performance.
“After a result like that at the first Silverstone race, we definitely have the motivation to do the same, if not even better this weekend.” Said Ocon
“One thing I think we can improve is qualifying. In Q1 and Q2 we were clearly a top eight, maybe even a top six, car and then in Q3 we just couldn’t quite get it together. If we can start higher up the order, our race pace is definitely good enough to take some big points.
“We have different tyres this weekend, so Friday will be about seeing what we can do with them and identifying our strategy for both qualifying and the race.”
Matt Harman, Engineering Director added that he knows this weekend will be a more of a challenge than the previous race and identifying what Renault can differently.
“There will be some new challenges this weekend. The tyres are a compound softer so that will change our race and qualifying strategy.
“We’ve looked through some simulations and which car setup to take for the weekend. We have some interesting mechanical developments to go on the car in very specific areas.
“This will allow us to improve our performance, and also help our understanding for next year’s car, which is an evolution of the current one.”
