Ricciardo admits Renault ‘need to do better’

Daniel Ricciardo has said that Renault need to take bigger steps if they want to achieve their goal of getting podiums by next season. 

The French team have often spoken of their long term targets to return to the top of the grid but have thus far struggled to even top the midfield, falling behind customer team McLaren this season.

“I don’t want to say [it’s been] in line [with expectations], because obviously I hoped for more, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen like this,” Ricciardo said to Motorsport.com.

“So if I look at Canada, the qualifying, I’d actually say that exceeded probably some expectation in the first few races, but then obviously some other races like Austria, that was lower than our expectations.

“So we bounced around in between everything really, but now at this halfway point, I think we could say, alright, we need to do better, if we want to be on target for podiums in 2020, we need to start making bigger steps for the second half of the year.

“Up until now, let’s say I’m somewhere in the middle with expectations, but I would now expect the second half of the season to have some more regular, whatever it is, top-six finishes.”

Renault have struggled in particular since their home Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, scoring just 11 points since then despite installing upgrades that they’d hoped would make them the best of the rest.

Ricciardo, who has criticised his team’s mentality, says he expects the car has improved over the summer break and will continue to do so with the next round of updates.

“We won’t have another, let’s say, proper update until well after the summer break, but I would expect some developments,” Ricciardo added.

“We brought some updates in France, they weren’t massive, so I think the next batch we bring, I would expect to feel a bit more.

“But, yeah, I’m not down or anything, because again, I would hope that we would be doing better, but I knew that it was going to take some time. If we stay where we are now to the end of the season, then that’s lower than what we expect.”

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