Renault Impressed With Their Drivers

Cyril Abiteboul says that Renault Drivers are in the “big boy league” after the opening Grand Prix in Australia.

Nico Hulkenberg finished seventh whilst team-mate Sainz finished 10th battling whilst feeling sick.

Renault’s managing director said: “It’s good to see that we have drivers now under pressure from Bottas and Alonso and they are handling it.

“They have the hardware to handle it, although obviously, it was a track where it’s difficult to overtake.

“Carlos was suffering a little bit due to a problem with the drinking system, but I don’t think it would have changed anything anyway.

“They need to stay at the top of their games because now they are part of the big boy league.

Renault was eight points shy of Red Bull’s total at the weekend but the team are remaining positive.

“It’s a decent start and a start that gives us confidence and focus

“Not having had any reliability issues will also allow us to focus on what we have to do on the performance side, to hopefully clear Haas and also to continue fighting with McLaren because that’s going to be an interesting fight during the season.

“It’s in line with the target for the season start, it’s in line with our expectations, it’s in line with our feeling after the tests but nothing more.

“It’s a sort of demonstration that as we are progressing in the field everything becomes more important, pitstop execution, strategy execution, reliability is a must -and performance.

“There won’t be any back-off possible, that’s very clear, we will have to push on in all aspects.

“We know we have the pipeline what’s needed both on the chassis and the engine side.

“So we are coming out of that first race pretty confident about the season to come.”