Daniel Ricciardo was relieved to put to an end their pointless run with a seventh-place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix. The Australian has been reflecting on what he described as a "deserved" result.
Ricciardo's Sunday got off to a nightmare start as he failed to make it out of the opening qualifying session. However, he recovered to take seventh and help Renault to a double points finish, with his teammate Nico Hulkenberg in tenth.
Ricciardo was relieved to finally end his run of not scoring any points and felt it was actually quite comfortable.
“The team deserved this result today. We’ve been on a bit of a frustrating run recently without scoring, so to take seventh today is excellent," Ricciardo said in Renault's post-race report.
"We had an issue in qualifying with the rear of the car that the boys fixed, which explained why we were quite far down. We had good pace in the race and were coming through quite nicely.
"Starting on the Medium tyre worked to our advantage and we came through the pack with some enjoyable battles. It was nice to execute a good strategy, we pulled through and, in the end, it was a deserved and quite comfortable seventh place.”