Daniel Ricciardo: Renault made a “statement” with result at Monza

Daniel Ricciardo has said that Renault made a “statement” with their fourth and fifth placed finishes at Monza after a few years of struggle at the track which requires a lot of power.

Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg qualified fifth and sixth, translating their starting positions into fourth and fifth, courtesy of a Sebastian Vettel spin, without much contest from drivers behind which helped them gain ground on McLaren in the constructors championship.
 
The Australian hails the progress that the team has made in 2019, having struggled at the start of the season, praising the Viry-Chatillon engine base.
 
Ricciardo said (quoted by Motorsport.com): "We finally got 'maximum' points, if you know what I mean, and that's really pleasing.

"I want to kind of give an extra special shout-out to Viry, to the engine boys. I think to get this sort of result with the Renault team and power unit is quite a statement.

"Every year we [went to Monza] and it feels like there's a lack of optimism. At least, over the last few years it was never a strength of ours.

“And for them to turn it around this year to make the gains and put on this result is special.

"Hopefully we can learn something from these low-downforce circuits and take it into a high-downforce one, like Singapore."

Taking the positives from Monza it also highlighted the issues that face Renault with their ability in high downforce circuits, something the Honey Badger feels the team can resolve.

"For sure, the package we've got on those circuits is great so coming into Singapore I think there's a lot of things we can learn with a high-downforce and take something from there,” Ricciardo added.

"We definitely seemed stronger on these higher-speed flowing parts. But it doesn't mean we can't get it right on low speed.

“So we'll do some homework and hopefully it's an encouraging result for the boys at Enstone and particularly Viry."