Daniel Ricciardo says a less aggressive approach to setup has boosted Renault at the British Grand Prix.
The Australian rather upset the order by beating McLaren’s Lando Norris to seventh on the grid for Sunday’s race at Silverstone.
This followed a disappointing weekend in Austria where the Enstone-based outfit failed to reach the top 10, with Ricciardo explaining what went wrong.
“The turnaround from Austria is definitely encouraging,” he said via Motorsport Week.
“We were not very encouraged after Austria, we felt like we had a bit of work to do. To bounce back in the space of a week is really good for the team, just to give them the reassurance that the car can certainly work.
“We brought some updates and tried to push them a bit in Austria. We probably just went a little bit away from something more conventional and what we had built up.”
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The result in Spielberg also threatened to derail the momentum that Ricciardo and Renault had been building in the races prior.
“Before France, we’d built up to some pretty good results. Especially me I started to get quite comfortable with the car,” he explained.
“Then, updates are good and you welcome them, but they improved the car in some areas and gave us a few unknowns in some others.
“It was not black and white. We tried to run with them again in Austria, and push them to their optimum limit, but the car was not really happy there.
“So we came back on a few things this weekend and tried to go back to our base and a car that was more familiar to us.
“That is where we’ve been a little bit more comfortable.”
With McLaren still looking strong as the fourth fastest team though, Ricciardo has a tough task keeping young Norris behind him in the race.