Daniel Ricciardo admits Renault is having an “easy” weekend at Monza as progress with the engine has made them more competitive.
The Australian starts Sunday’s race from fifth on the grid following the madness at the end of Q3, his second-best starting position after claiming fourth in Canada.
This comes as the French manufacturer enjoys an improvement in pace compared to before the summer break, with Ricciardo offering his usual jovial take on the situation.
“I feel like after the break, maybe all the partying, all the drinking helped,” he smiled initially.
“But in all seriousness, the car running on more low-downforce – what we ran in Spa, everything was [taken] off here pretty much… it just felt like the balance was there and we didn’t really touch the car all weekend, it’s been pretty easy.”
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After four years of struggling with a power deficit to the best engines, Renault arrived in 2019 with a much-improved product performance-wise even if the reliability hasn’t always been great.
As a result, Ricciardo does feel the gap to the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari is now pretty minimal.
“Yeah, we have the engine upgrade that we are able to use this weekend and that’s just fun, it’s been really strong, straight-line speed is there,” he noted.
“People can see it from a power side – we have made a lot of progress this year. Last week in Spa we had quite a slippery car down the straights, so that is good.
“It gives certainly some optimism coming here and I am certainly excited to race here. It is always one I enjoy.
“All the years at Red Bull it was ‘power unit, power unit, the car is perfect, it’s the power unit’‘,” he added.
“But actually this year I feel they have made a lot of improvement [with the engine] and we just need to improve the car.”