Renault has solved their DRS problem following Daniel Ricciardo’s failure on Tuesday, the team has confirmed.
The Australian was lucky to avoid the barrier when the flap which rises to open the gap in the rear wing flew off down the straight pitching the car into a spin when Ricciardo braked.
Unsurprisingly, Renault stopped using the DRS both with Nico Hulkenberg both on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, but when their new driver was back on track in the afternoon, he had the privilege of testing their solution.
“We had a problem with the DRS mechanism,” technical director Nick Chester told Motorsport.com.
“It lost the link bar, and that allowed the flap to rotate. It was a fairly easy fix. We understood what the problem was and then we fixed it and we have been running DRS today.
“We did some checks on it after lunch and then ran it on the fast laps at the start of each run in the afternoon.”
Chester then also confirmed the issue was linked to the change in rear wing width this year which is resulting in a more powerful DRS effect.
“It is a bigger wing. More loaded,” he said. “The geometry has changed as well for the DRS because we have a different line of action now for this year. So it is just a detail change that we needed to make.”
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Overall, however, the R.S.19 has been living up to Renault’s expectations.
“We are reasonably positive, but it is difficult because there are different fuel loads and engine modes, plus DRS on and DRS off,” he said.
“Trying to pick it all apart is quite difficult, and for a lot of runs, we don’t know what fuel people are on.
“I think we are reasonably positive, but we will get a clearer idea when we see more race runs and more qualifying runs, and gradually take the differences and put it all together.
“I think there is a whole group of cars that could be quite tight, and we will learn a bit more how tight that is particularly in the next test.”
