While “happy” for Red Bull after their win in Austria, Daniel Ricciardo claims the team hasn’t progressed since last season.
Max Verstappen produced a brilliant charge to give the team and new engine supplier Honda their first victory of the year in Spielberg.
Naturally, that led to the Australian being asked if it had changed his thinking over his decision to join Renault for 2019.
“Honestly, no regrets,” he was quoted by Motorsport Week on Thursday.
“Actually, part of me was pretty happy for them and for F1 to have a good race. It went through a lot of scrutiny after France, so for the sport to have a good race was awesome.
“But no, honestly if I look back? By that time last year, Red Bull had three wins and that (Austria) was the first.”
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And it is that inability to improve from occasional winners to championship contenders which keeps Ricciardo comfortable with his move.
“Obviously, I’m further back at the moment, you’re absolutely right,” he acknowledged. “But I expected this and if I decided to stay at Red Bull, it was to try and win a title.
“Sure they got the win last time out, but they are still a fair way from the title. That’s not having a dig, that’s just the reality.
“I don’t think I would have necessarily achieved anything else that I was already achieving there, so for that, no regrets.”
On Renault, there is a concern that momentum, which has built in Canada and maintained in France, is slowing after a poor weekend in Austria.
“It wasn’t a fun one for us really. We obviously got pretty deep into it after and tried to figure out why we were off the pace all weekend,” Ricciardo explained via Crash.net.
“Definitely feel we learned some things with set-up and I think we kind of just started in a direction which we kept pursuing from Friday, thinking it was the right way to go, but I think in hindsight it wasn’t.
“It’s probably more just a set-up misdirection we went for as opposed to anything crazy we found on the car.
“I think we kind of moved away from something we’d got to know but we’ll try to bring it back this weekend for Silverstone and go back to what we know,” he concluded.