Three Renault powered cars in the top ten in Spain

(© Ben Johnston 2015)

Renault Sport F1 saw three of their cars finish in the top ten at the Spanish Grand Prix over the weekend. Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo finished the race as the highest placed Renault powered car as the Australian came home in seventh place which was a great result when you consider that he suffered a catastrophic power unit failure right at the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz put in another strong performance ending the race in 9^th place in front of his home crowd, although like team mate he would have hoped for more following a fantastic qualifying session Saturday.

Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Daniil Kvyat finished the race by rounding out the top ten. The Russian ended the race one lap down on winner Nico Rosberg.

Meanwhile, Max Verstappen finished the race in eleventh place just outside the points having qualified in 6^th place alongside his team mate Carlos Sainz.

For Renault, the Spanish Grand Prix was all about sorting out the reliability of their power unit and they can be satisfied with getting all of the cars to end of the race without any failures. They also did a good job over the course of the weekend but still have work to do to catch Mercedes and Ferrari.

Speaking following the race Renault Sport F1’s Director of Operations, Remi Taffin stated:

‘This weekend we achieved our minimum aim of finishing the Grand Prix with all four cars. We were less conservative in qualifying and showed that the potential is still there, but we took a safe approach in the race. We now need to maintain this platform and build on it for the next races. In parallel we are aware we need to raise our game in performance but we need to do this without taking any risks with the reliability.’

Renault Sport F1’s Managing Director Cyril Abiteboul commented saying:

‘Everyone at Viry has worked hard to recover from the disappointment of the first four races. We needed to eliminate the issues we saw and get reliability under control before we could introduce any new specification parts. We had to limit mileage in some cases until we had all the necessary information, which is never ideal, but sometimes you have to take a short term hit for long term gain. All four cars crossed the line so we are more or less back on an level footing with reliability, and can now look to bring a bit more performance for the next races.’

Renault’s attention now switches to the opening 2 day in-season test of the season which gets underway at the Circuit Barcelona de Catalunya tomorrow.

© Ben Johnston 2015