Daniel Ricciardo ignored only finishing P12 as he struck an optimistic tone about Renault’s French Grand Prix updates.
The Enstone-based team has thrown everything at the car to boost their chances at Paul Ricard with a significant new aero package as well as giving the Australian an updated engine ahead of schedule.
It was surprising then when neither Ricciardo nor teammate Nico Hulkenberg made the top 10, but the former Red Bull driver is confident the potential is there.
“It was positive, although maybe the timesheets don’t reflect how the car actually felt,” he said via PlanetF1.
“Across all our runs, the car seemed good. Our soft tyre run in qualifying trim was slightly tricky, especially with high track temperatures and maybe we missed out a little there.
“It didn’t feel that far off, and I’m certainly optimistic for tomorrow.”
Ricciardo also anticipates some work is still needed to fully optimise the raft of new parts.
“The upgrades seemed positive and we have some data to go through to find further improvements,” he added.
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Technical director Nick Chester agreed with that final point but also pointed to the tyres as an area to look at.
“It’s been an interesting first day of running,” he stated. “The morning was productive, but we seemed to lose some pace in the afternoon.
“While we looked fairly competitive on the longer runs, we have some pace to find on the shorter ones. The deltas between the tyre compounds aren’t quite as expected here – there’s not much between them.
“We need to look through the data we gathered to evaluate the new upgrades to make sure we get everything to work together.”