Renault now has "chokehold" on car sweet spot - Daniel Ricciardo

Renault

Renault now has "chokehold" on car sweet spot - Ricciardo

Australian hopeful potential of R.S.20 has been unlocked

Ian Parkes

Tuesday 1 September 2020 18:04

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Daniel Ricciardo is confident Renault has finally unearthed a platform on which it can develop this season's car that will help it in the fight for third place in the Formula 1 constructors' championship.

The French manufacturer delivered its biggest points haul since it returned to F1 as a constructor in 2016 with 23 from the Belgian Grand Prix as Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon finished fourth and fifth respectively.

Although the result matched that from last year's Italian Grand Prix, Ricciardo's point for fastest lap on the final lap at Spa-Francorchamps tipped the balance.

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Renault should again be strong this weekend at Monza, although it is on high-downforce circuits where the team needs to prove itself, with the Australian confident the team has discovered "a sweet spot" with the R.S.20 that will help it moving forward.

"Obviously, a lot of the time when you go to a high-downforce circuit, you kind of don't even question it," said Ricciardo. "You put the big wing on because that is going to be fastest.

"I wonder whether we would try running lower at some difficult high circuits and accept that that is a weakness now that we can make something work more with a smaller wing like that. I don't know."

Believing, though, Renault found a way forward from the two races at Silverstone, Ricciardo added: "We picked something up on the set-up [in] which we think we found like a sweet spot, and in particular, I found with the feeling in the car 'This is how we need to run the car'.

"We played around with it a bit as well over the weekend, and again there was one session, I think it was FP2, where I was like 'Okay, we have found the sweet spot'. There is something fundamental that I think we have got a good chokehold on.

"I think we can get this set-up working on high downforce. It is not typical to low downforce, we can run it on all levels so I think it is just finding what works best on the high downforce.

"I think we have found it with these mediums [Pirelli tyres], and it certainly brings the car alive. That is something I am pretty confident is where the RS20 likes to be run.

"I am not sure we had a real discovery like this last year so that has been encouraging. The set-up on the car is working better and it is giving the car a lot more grip basically."

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