Renault to "accelerate" upgrades after a point-less Spanish Grand Prix

Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul has said the team will "accelerate the next upgrades" to the R.S.20 after failing to register points at a grand prix for the first time in 2020.

Through the efforts of drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, Renault had scored points in each of the first five grands prix of the current season, but the French manufacturer struggled in Spain after showing promising pace during Friday practice.

However, despite a steady flow of points, only once has Renault finished a grand prix with both cars in the points, with Ricciardo scoring a season-best fourth position for the team at the British Grand Prix and Ocon following the Australian home in sixth.

Following the Barcelona race, Abiteboul said: "We’ve made some steps in the winter, but not enough to be on the leading side of the midfield here. It’s all very tight; two tenths yesterday in qualifying made a big difference and, again, it was tight today in the race.

"That’s not an excuse, though. We should be at a point where we could be doing better than that. We have a clear area of focus and we will be pushing to accelerate the next upgrades on the car."

Reflecting on the weekend, he added: “We concluded our first weekend of the year without scoring any points. This is not for a lack of effort or execution from the race team and I believe we extracted all we could from the car this weekend.

"Put simply, the car is not good enough at a track like this one. Barcelona is a good test when it comes to the aerodynamic efficiency of the car, so it says something about the areas we have to improve."

Fnishing 11th, one place outside of the points paying positions, Ricciardo admitted: "Obviously, it’s a bit disappointing as we came here expecting much more, especially after two decent races last time out. We didn’t expect to have a difficult weekend, but it was very tight out there.

"We were close to the top ten in qualifying and in the race, so we’ll try and find out where we lost those couple of tenths and move on to the next race.”

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