Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg were thrilled to fight back into the points after a tough morning at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Sitting just 17th and 18th after Friday practice, the Renault drivers didn’t move much higher in qualifying as the Australian was eliminated in Q1 and his teammate suffered an issue in Q2 leaving them 15th and 16th.
Good early laps saw them both back in the top 10 quite quickly, however, with Ricciardo using the soft rubber late to carve through the field.
“The team deserved this result today. We’ve been on a bit of a frustrating run recently without scoring, so to take seventh today is excellent,” he said before that became sixth after Charles Leclerc was penalised.
“We had an issue in qualifying with the rear of the car that the boys fixed, which explained why we were quite far down, but we had good pace in the race and were coming through quite nicely.
“Starting on the medium tyre worked to our advantage and we came through the pack with some enjoyable battles. It was nice to execute a good strategy, we pulled through and, in the end, it was a deserved and quite comfortable result.”
Hulkenberg wasn’t quite as strong and indeed had to let Daniel through to go on his late charge, but P10 was still a solid result for the German.
“I’m very happy for the team today, with both Daniel and me inside the points,” he stated. “We fought all the way, pushed hard and everything seemed to come together.
“It was an amazing recovery from this morning where our qualifying wasn’t so good.
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“I made a great start off the line, passed a few cars at Turn 1 and then pushed on with good track position. From there, it was a fight.
“The whole second stint we were in traffic and by the end, it was getting hot and tasty out there with everyone’s tyres going off.”
Of course, hanging over those results is the protest made by Racing Point post-race accusing Renault of running an illegal automatic brake bias system.
The FIA has impounded both the steering wheel and ECU of both cars and an investigation is underway.