Daniel Ricciardo was relieved to score his first Renault points at the Chinese Grand Prix.
The Australian maintained his position at the front of the midfield throughout, eventually holding off a charging Sergio Perez late on.
After a difficult start to life at the Enstone team, a largely uneventful race was just what was needed.
“First points, it’s good to get on the board, good to finish the race and it was nice,” he told Sky Sports.
“It might have looked a simple seventh, but it wasn’t easy. It was a bit of a lonely race, I didn’t have so many battles but I was being pushed hard from the cars behind all the way to the end.”
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Hopefully, for Ricciardo, Shanghai can be the first step in the tough challenge he has set himself with Renault.
“We’ll take the positives and build on that, there’s a lot of work to do though,” he admitted. “We need to work to get both cars home and in the points.”
Indeed, for Ricciardo’s success, another mechanical retirement struck Nico Hulkenberg.
“We pitted and came out in some traffic, but then I felt a loss of power,” the German explained.
“We tried our best to fix it out there as it looked like a software issue, but it wasn’t possible and we had to park up.
“We’re looking into the issue, but it looks like an MGU-K related problem.”
If so, that was a new MGU-K installed this weekend and could put Hulkenberg at the risk of a grid penalty if another is required in Baku.