Ricciardo maintains Renault at front of midfield – Speedcafe

Daniel Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo believes that Renault is right at the front of Formula 1s midfield battle despite there being room for improvement after the season-opener.
The West Australian retired after just 17 laps of the Austrian Grand Prix due to a cooling issue while new team-mate Esteban Ocon spent a chunk of the race battling outside the top 10 before taking the chequered flag in eighth position.
Racing Point, particularly through Sergio Perez, showed strong pace through practice and qualifying, while last years top midfield team in McLaren got Lando Norris onto the podium, albeit fourth on the road, and Carlos Sainz to fifth.
Ricciardo did at least make it through to Q3 in what he says was an encouraging performance, although the R.S.20 still needs work as a race car.
With fuel, obviously there’s a lot more weight and a lot more stress on the tyres in particular, and it’s just the way we go about that and managing the car and let’s say the energy being put under the tyres and the load with the extra fuel, he said regarding race conditions.
Especially, the track was really hot on Sunday and it probably just got away from us for a few of those reasons.
The race was obviously a bit cut short for me, but I think even though I did only a small amount of laps, I think there were still some things which I learned from the race which we can be better at.
But quali-spec car, I think we’re there. Hard to say what position I think we are, but in that midfield, I want to say we’re in that

Click here to view the original article.