Renault are promising to go “all or nothing” in their bid for third in the Constructors’ Championship after a disappointing qualifying at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Having claimed third and fourth albeit in unrepresentative conditions in final practice earlier in the day, both Esteban Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo were knocked out in Q2 by the improving AlphaTauri’s.
For Ocon, the only upside was he finally beat Ricciardo in a dry session this year, in addition to the wet Saturday at the Styrian GP, but that still didn’t atone for the surprising drop in pace.
“We were looking shiny in practice, we were very strong, we were in top five most of the time,” rued the Frenchman. “So it is a bit disappointing to see us out of Q2, not coming into Q3.
“We need to review, dig into that, see what happened exactly. We lost rear grip, lost confidence and obviously here, when you don’t have that, you can’t attack all the combinations of corners.
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“The good thing is that we choose the tyres tomorrow, which does give us something to work with,” Ocon, who’ll start P10 after Charles Leclerc’s penalty noted. “It’s not going to be easy to race on the softs for the other guys.”
Renault though are banking all their hopes on a crazy race on Sunday to outscore McLaren by 13 points and Racing Point by 23 to snatch third behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
“It’s going to be all or nothing tomorrow,” Ocon acknowledged. “We need to come back, we need to score big points for the Constructors’ Championship. That’s going to be mega important, so let’s see what we can do.”
As for teammate Ricciardo, he was left more frustrated by a bad last qualifying session for Renault before joining McLaren in 2021.
“I don’t like to be the grumpy-pants,” he told Sky Sports. “This is my last one so I wanted to do better for the team as well so I will try to do what the others did last week and try to come through from the back and be on the podium.”