Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo is just the man to watch in the Belgin grand prix. This is after he ended up ranking 4th in the Saturday’s qualifiers.
The Renault team has been struggling to remain in the mid-field battle after enduring a tough time at Catalunya in Spain, but the Saturday qualifier gave them high hopes as Ricciardo’s teammate Esteban Ocon finished 6th.
This may have all been contributed by the downforce options that the team tried out making the RS20 ‘come alive’ as Daniel described.
“We are pretty light, we feel this was a characteristic of the car last year. I feel like for whatever reason, the cars seems a bit more happier with a little bit less load on it” said the 31-year-old.
“Obviously you can’t run this low around a circuit like Barcelona, but when we do come to these more high speed flowing circuits it just seems like it’s in a better place with a smaller rear wing.”
This was his ever best qualifying perfomance at Spa being his 10th visit to the track. The Australian had turned out second in thecond free practice session on Friday before stopping on the track after the team spotted a hydraulics issue. He also expressed a feeling that the R.S20 felt faster and ‘fun’ than the last year’s car.
Ricciardo also added that his team was very nervous and had their expectations high on the Saturday’s qualifier but it all paid up to see him in the second row also saying that the car had a little lower downforce than other cars on the grid which gave the best for the first and third qualifying rounds though the second run was compromised.
Ocon was also happy ranking 6th in the run saying, “It’s been strong all weekend, we put the car down and compared to Barcelona, it’s handling so much better, so with all the changes we did coming into this race”
“It gave us confidence, we have seen it is working on track, so we can work with a lot more calm and easy spirits. It feels good, I’m happy.”
