Daniel Ricciardo bounces back behind Renault solution

Daniel Ricciardo has put in 80 laps in his new Renault RS19 and recorded the third-fastest time on day three of Formula One testing in Barcelona.

After a mixed start to the week there was reason for the Australian to smile overnight.

In addition to completing long runs on harder tyres to test the car’s reliability and endurance on different modes, Ricciardo moved to a softer tyre late in the session.

He was rewarded with a fastest time of one minute, 18.164 seconds.

“I’m happy to get some solid laps in today with consistent running,” Ricciardo said.

“It’s been positive as we’ve been lacking that rhythm in the car over the last few days.

“We tried three different compounds of tyre so that was also good to go through and understand.

“I’m keen to get stuck into it to see where we can keep improving. The main thing was driving 80 laps, that was really important and all I can ask for today.”

Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat recorded the fastest time of the day with a 1:17.704 in the final stages of the day, while Kimi Raikkonen (1:17.762) squeezed his Alfa Romeo into second.

Ricciardo’s long and fast run came after his rear wing broke on day two.

He was thrown off the track when an element flew off his car, with Renault confirming it was a problem with the car’s DRS mechanism.

The part was kept off the car when Nico Hulkenberg drove in the morning on day three before Ricciardo tested a fixed model.

“It lost the link bar, and that allowed the flap to rotate. It was a fairly easy fix,” Renault technical director Nick Chester said.

“We understood what the problem was and then we fixed it and we have been running DRS today.

“We did some checks on it after lunch and then ran it on the fast laps at the start of each run in the afternoon.”

Chester explained that the bigger rear wings in the 2019 regulations were partly to blame.

“It is a bigger wing. More loaded,” he said.

“The geometry has changed as well for the DRS because we have a different line of action now for this year. So it is a just a detail change that we needed to make.”

While Ricciardo’s quick pace on the softer tyre was a big win for Renault, there is a catch.

The team boss won’t judge the car against the competition until later in the pre-season.

“We are reasonably positive, but it is difficult because there are different fuel loads and engine modes, plus DRS on and DRS off,” he said.

“Trying to pick it all apart is quite difficult. And for a lot of runs we don’t know what fuel people are on.

“I think we are reasonably positive, but we will get a clearer idea when we see more race runs and more qualifying runs, and gradually take the differences and put it all together.

“I think there is a whole group of cars that could be quite tight, and we will learn a bit more how tight that is particularly in the next test.”

with Autosport