Daniel Ricciardo is more optimistic about Renault’s pace heading to Australia after a strong end to pre-season testing.
The Aussie heads home after matching the pace of Mercedes and Red Bull on the same tyre as the German manufacturer on the final day of running in Barcelona.
But of course, Ricciardo was quick to downplay any suggestion that result reflects where Renault will be fighting in 2020.
“There’s the part where you’re reserved because it’s just testing and we had a C5 tyre,” he told Motorsport of keeping expectations in check.
“We know that we’re not as quick as Mercedes now, so I don’t know what they were doing, but I don’t want to get that ahead of ourselves.
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“I don’t necessarily get excited about the P1, but in saying that, if I put the C5 on and we were P6, for sure I would be disappointed,” he acknowledged.
“It is nice, at least we put in a good lap. We were able to use a good tyre relatively well. So there are positives for sure.
“We’ve been doing this long enough to know that’s not necessarily what we’re going to qualify in Melbourne, but it’s still positive for us to see that we extracted a quick time.”
More broadly, Ricciardo is more confident of a stronger start to this season than last year, where he failed to score points until the third race in China.
“We’ve improved the overall balance of the car, worked through some set-up changes and our reliability has been strong,” he reflected.
“I believe we’ve cranked up more kilometres on the engine tests back at Viry than we’ve ever had before, so this combined with our results over the two tests are ultimately encouraging signs ahead of the start of the season in Australia.”