Daniel Ricciardo offered an upbeat assessment of Renault’s potential despite a scary moment in testing on Tuesday.
The Australian remained in the car in the morning, having run on Monday afternoon and was focusing on longer runs before disaster struck.
Coming down the main straight, the DRS flap on the rear wing would fly off after the mechanism broke with Ricciardo spinning into the gravel at Turn 1 and just finishing shy of the barrier.
“The DRS system is a bit different to last year, there’s a big gain,” he told Sky Sports, referring to the larger ‘letterbox’ under the new aero rules.
“I don’t know if that’s putting more pressure and force [on the mechanism], but as soon as I braked, I lost the car.
“I went in pretty quick so I was just glad I didn’t end up in the barriers and lose more time. I lost most of the morning, but this is what testing’s for.
“We’ll try to learn from our little mistakes for now and build on those.”
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Brown trousers aside, Ricciardo is satisfied by what he’s seeing with Renault and reveals there is plenty more potential to come.
“To be honest we’re still running everything pretty conservative so we’re not up to what we’ll have in Melbourne,” he explained. “It’s about being safe.
“It all feels pretty good for now, I don’t have any concerns from that.
“I only really did one proper long run this morning and that one was pretty encouraging. Just the way the car responded and the way we used the tyres.
“The behaviour and the characteristics were encouraging at this stage.”