Daniel Ricciardo, Renault, Yas Marina, 2020

Ricciardo: Fifth in championship shows extent of Renault’s “turnaround”

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In the round-up: Daniel Ricciardo says his fifth place finish in the drivers championship shows the extent of the gains Renault have made since he joined them.

What they say

Ricciardo, who will join McLaren for the 2021 F1 season, said he’s pleased with the progress made during his two years at Renault:

This year, although shortened, it was such a such a chaotic year, but actually a really strong one. And I’m really pleased with how far we’ve come, both myself and the team.

Fifth in the drivers championship, obviously there’s no award for that, but I think it speaks for itself in the turnaround we made this year.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Will trimming pre-race practice by an hour really make much difference?

I fail to see what reducing the track time by an hour on Fridays is supposed to accomplish. All the work to get the teams and cars to the track remains the same.

Presumably, all the normal garage crew and other staff will still be in attendance, and the hours required to prep the cars for the track won’t change.

I suppose that costs might be reduced slightly by perhaps having a few less car damaging practice incidents? Save a few bucks on fuel? As the actual team work load will hardly change at all, I just don’t get it.
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32 comments on “Ricciardo: Fifth in championship shows extent of Renault’s “turnaround””

  1. On the COTD: This is F1: where sporting regulations are often not logical, not practical and not sensical at all.

    They reduce practice in 1 hour to reduce costs and “help” midfield teams. But for a big team is much easier to prepare for a race in less time than for a midfield team. Yet, they will be “surprised” when the difference between the big teams and the rest grow up.

    1. Exactly, @esmiz. Fortunately for them, the FIA/FOM and their team of legal beagles are far above the Law of Unintended Consequences.

      1. @jimmi-cynic there have been a fair few fans on this site who have also argued for a reduction in practice time to try and “spice things up” in the hope that it will make races more unpredictable, so there is an external faction that has also been pushing for that change.

    2. @esmiz @jimmi-cynic
      I doubt making the Friday sessions 60 minutes long rather than 90 min will make a real difference to the competitive pecking order since teams don’t use the track time available as much as they could these days anyway.

    3. Yup. Makes all the other expenses even less worthwhile, gives the fans even less.

  2. petebaldwin (@)
    31st December 2020, 1:09

    That’s an interesting comment from Mario – “We were looking for an interim solution for a year”

    I assume that means they’ll be looking to get Tsonda in the Red Bull ASAP providing he does well enough. I didn’t realise they viewed Perez as a temporary driver…

    1. @petebaldwin For sure, Perez is initially only a stop-gap solution, hence the one-year contract. I don’t think Tsunoda will be in the senior team in 2022, though. More likely either Perez for another year-commitment a la Bottas at Mercedes or Gasly back. Albon’s chance might get impacted by him not doing any racing next year versus Gasly.

  3. Shows how good he is compared to were his teammate is

    1. @carlosmedrano It shows more what could have been if Ocon hadn’t had so many points lost due to technical issues. Ocon was usually right behind (or in the second half right in front of) Ricciardo.

      It also does show what the benefit of a driver like Ricciardo is to the development of the car. Renault have gotten progressively better season on season after Ricciardo joined. While Red Bull haven been falling further behind every season to Mercedes since Ricciardo left them.

      1. @f1oclown
        “While Red Bull haven been falling further behind every season to Mercedes since Ricciardo left them.”

        Hahaha, 2018 standings:
        Red Bull 3rd
        Renault 4th

        2020:
        Red Bull 2nd
        Renault 4th

        But hey, don’t let facts stand in the way…….

        Just out of curiosity: When you wake up in the morning, you actually ask yourself: “How can I show the racefans.net readers what a clueless clown I am? ”

        You’re like the Bottas of comments.

        (shall we talk about how far Red Bull fell back the moment Daniel joined them…….?)

        I’m gonna love seeing you in 2021.

        1. Almost forgot:
          2019 standings, Renault 5th…….looool

          They actually dropped a place the moment Daniel joined, so one might say that this years climb on the rankings is a result of Ocon and not Daniel….and the rot at RBR was also thanks to Daniel….

          Like I said previous: When Daniel joined RBR, they dropped from 1 to 2.

          In 2015 from 2 to 4. (Daniel’s influence was rising…..)

          And it was only after Max joined that RBR was able to address the rot in car development Daniel was creating.

          But hey, don’t let facts stand in your way!

          1. Mark my words:
            In 2021 McLaren is gonna fall back on the rankings, despite getting the best engine!

          2. Oconomo, so, you are glorying in wanting to see misery and hardship imposed on others? That is ultimately what you are gloating about, and it is a mark of your character that you seem to enjoy causing suffering in others.

      2. Actually, Renault got better season after season with Hulkenberg 9th- 4th.
        They invested way too much in Ricciardo, who was so bad at the start of 19 they invested all their energy in making him look better.

  4. So are we just going to see 10 minutes of installation laps followed by 30-odd minutes of inactivity followed by 20 minutes of actual running in first practice….? Or will the usual hour and a half running be crammed into 1 hour?

    1. On-track practice time is mainly used to confirm what the computers predict anyway.
      They don’t use as much track time as possible like they used to, they use as little track time as possible – thanks to the tyre and engine regulations, and the hundreds of sensors capturing telemetry data that then gets analysed and re-simulated 24/7 by hundreds of people and even more computers.

      Even if it was 90 minutes worth of usual running in 60 minutes, it would still not be very much.

    2. @tommy-c – Like in FP3 (already 60 minutes).
      @S – Indeed.

  5. Re COTD
    I can’t see how reducing the amount of practice time on the track is supposed to make the race better. We, the fans, pay to see F1 put its best foot forward. How is reducing the amount of practice going to make the event better?

    1. @drycrust No difference in this regard, neither for the better or worse.

  6. Regarding the Karting tweet: Someone who’s done competitive racing for a while vs. people that haven’t, or at least not as much as him. Nevertheless, I’d also like to be driving a go-kart on the same track at the same time as an active F1 driver, even if only for a time trial, to see how I’d fare against anyone of them.

    In response to the COTD: Nothing will change regarding preparation time and how early teams have to be on trackside, etc. I doubt anything will change concerning the session itself either as teams haven’t done as much running as they could time-wise for a while anyway compared to the more distant past.

  7. COTD only looks at cost, but more likely it’s the “entertainment” factor that is at the base of this reduction. I would assume that the idea is that less training time means potentially less refined setups and therefore more chance of the random results the “fans” so desperately desire.

  8. Rest in Peace John Paul Jr.

  9. What red bull is making sense… The junior program is lacking a few drivers that are ready for F1. Hence why the reinstated Hartley and Albon into the program to fill seats at torro Rossi.

    They are going to see how good tsunoda is, then all things going well, Vips will be next in line.

    1. @napierrailton Don’t forget Kvyat in the same context as Hartley and Albon, although both he and Hartley out of these three have since been ousted again, so only Albon left, albeit only in test/reserve/simulator capacity. The situation in the program isn’t bad at the moment. Vips already has a super license, so I can see him as Tsunoda’s teammate in 2022 at Alpha Tauri, although it’s partly dependent on his results in F2 next year.

  10. With regards the COTD, I would really like to hear from a mechanic on the issue of whether missing Friday running makes a difference. I suspect it does, firstly all the data from the running needs to be analysed overnight. Secondly, should a car be pranged, mechanics will be up all night working on it – then doing Saturday and Sunday basically exhausted.

    As I say, it would be great to get an interview with a mechanic on this – perhaps a suggestion for a racefans article?

  11. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
    31st December 2020, 12:04

    Love the Mario kart music and sound effects in the Sainz video

  12. Sainz “the smooth operator” actually bragging he beat a bunch of noobs on a public karting venue, and even took time to make a video about it..

    1. Lol bitter much?

      1. @homerlovesbeer No but you seem to be

        1. @balue your original post showed you were going out of your way to take a jab at Sainz for no reason, and in your response you have then acted rather immaturely (whilst the response was not exactly the most mature, you seem to be rather eager to respond in kind yourself). It makes you look rather easily triggered and overemotional in the way that you actively sought out wanting to get offended in order to then justify lashing out at others, and it does come across as rather bitter and childish behaviour on your part.

  13. Eliminating all of Friday practice with exceptions maybe for street tracks would have helped to spice things up. 60 mins means actually losing teams money cause they can’t sell the valuable practice session appearances to wealthy prospects.

  14. So now teams might be able to save an extra set of tyres for qualifying then? Very important for the midfield teams who have often exhausted all there soft tyres by the time Q3 starts

Comments are closed.