‘With Ricciardo, Renault has a trump card’
Racing Point’s Andrew Green says that, in the fight for P3 in the Constructors Championship, Renault has a trump card in Daniel Ricciardo.
Racing Point is currently leading said fight, but Renault is just six points behind and is the in-form team after finishing on the podium in Germany courtesy of Ricciardo.
At the same race, Nico Hulkenberg stood in for Lance Stroll and finished in P8. While technical director Green feels the German was excellent, he says that losing a regular driver hurts the team, especially when rivals have such a strong one.
“We haven’t done ourselves a favour by changing drivers. At the Nürburgring, for example, we actually only had one car and therefore only 50 percent of the data,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.
“It was an incredibly difficult task for Nico to jump into the car coldly and drive straight away. The goal was simply to qualify for the race. He did that with ease. The improvement was incredible. One more try and he would even have made it into Q2.
“The fact that he still finished eighth from the very back was a great performance on the one hand, but it also shows that our car can’t be that bad.
“With Ricciardo, Renault naturally has a trump card in hand. He always really gets everything out of this car.”
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Everyone at Racing Point will be hoping that they can have a trump card of their own next season in Sebastian Vettel, who is replacing Sergio Perez.
Green is confident that this will be the case, feeling that he will have a positive impact on the team, and they will help him re-find his form.
“Nobody forgets how to drive a car fast. You just have to have the right car and the right people around you to do your job. Obviously, he’s having problems right now. We can offer him what he needs to return to his old form,” he added.
“The whole team wants him. He will feel that. We know that he can bring us as much as we can for him. Everyone in the team is looking forward to January when we can finally work with him.
“If he just opens the door to the factory, it will increase the motivation of every single employee. When a multiple world champion gets into one of our cars, it is also an appreciation of the people who work here.
“We deserve it. We were facing bankruptcy 18 months ago. This team almost didn’t exist anymore, and now a World Champion wants to drive for us. With us, he can experience his second wind.”
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