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Abiteboul confirms Renault still struggle to read tyres

10:17, 29 May 2018

byMatt

Cyril Abiteboul insists his Renault team struggled to understand Pirelli’s tyres in Monaco. Both of his drivers finished in the top 10 but confirms Sainz and Hulkenberg couldn’t manage the tyres as well as they would like.

Sainz was pitted with 62 laps remaining. The French team applied the ultrasoft, but Sainz would have preferred the supersoft. His team boss disagreed.

“I think moving to supersoft rather than ultrasoft would have been worst towards the end,” said Abiteboul.

“At the time we were doing it, it was maybe not clear why we were doing it, but towards the end, it was clear it was the right thing to do.”

Renault moved six points ahead of McLaren in the battle for 4th place. But Abiteboul suggested his team needs a better understanding of tyres.

“We saw again that it’s so difficult to read into these tyres - it was looking like we were going to have a very, very difficult race with Nico, and suddenly the tyres came back to life,” he added.

“Clearly some teams ahead of us manage to make it work, so it is possible."