Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul considers Daniel Ricciardo’s tough weekend in Australia a “learning exercise”.
The local favourite struggled for pace, sitting P12 behind his new teammate Nico Hulkenberg in qualifying, before seeing his race effectively ended by running over a drain on the run to Turn 1 on Sunday.
His new boss would fire a warning shot afterwards, suggesting Ricciardo needs to adjust to the different challenge of Formula 1’s midfield, but to Autosport, his tone was different.
“It’s a collective performance,” he said. “It was a weekend mainly of lows, apart from glimpses of a very good and strong performance from him and the car in practice, but in practice, we don’t care.
“We need collectively to do better. It’s a learning exercise, as we always say. When you change driver you make some steps backwards before you step forward. That’s what we’re going through as we speak.”
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Abiteboul also hoped Australian GP officials would consider taking out the drain which Ricciardo hit, despite accepting the former Red Bull driver’s situation was “extreme”.
“I hope they can fix that [hole] for the future because I guess it can be a bit dangerous,” he said.
“Having said that it’s not necessarily a place where the car is supposed to be, but we all know that at the start it can happen. Still, it was a bit strange.”
More broadly: “It’s not the start that he wanted, it’s not the start that we wanted, but we know that we can make it so much better and so much easier if we get things right in qualifying,” the Renault chief added.
“We’re leaving Australia with mixed feelings and a contrast of positive and negatives.”
The positive being Nico Hulkenberg’s move up from 11th to P7 just behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen on Sunday.