Ricciardo’s first season at Renault

The French manufacturer ended 2018 fourth in the constructors’ championship and ready to close the gap to the big three. But new signing Daniel Ricciardo faced a reality shock after his big-money move

Daniel Ricciardo knew his first season with Renault in Formula 1 would pass without a podium, let alone a victory. However, he expected more than scraping his way into the top 10 in the drivers’ championship and watching his team get comprehensively beaten by its engine customer Mclaren.

The 2019 campaign was a sobering one for Ricciardo. As a works team that had just finished fourth in 2018, it was fair to consider Renault the best-placed entity to break free of the best-of-the-rest tangle and close the gap to F1’s big three. However, it slipped to fifth in the championship, only just seeing off Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso, while Ricciardo lingered in 12th in the drivers’ standings with just four races to go before a late rise to ninth.

Renault’s flaws as a constructor and a race team were exposed by fluctuating performance and poor reliability. The season swung from the depths of a double-dnf in Bahrain and disqualification in Japan, to the highs of a fourth-place start in Canada and best team result since its 2016 return of fourth and fifth in Italy.

“The lows at times, we were scratching our heads,” Ricciardo admits. “Like, ‘We shouldn’t be this far down’. To be running

P14 or something, we thought we were done with this.”

Through it all, Ricciardo found ways to excel. That he scored four ‘Class B’ victories in a year that team-mate Nico Hulkenberg scored none is telling. Hulkenberg ran Ricciardo close in qualifying but Ricciardo upped his game when it mattered. When the Renault was at its fastest, Ricciardo got the job done. He scored midfield pole in China, Canada, Britain and Italy, and three of his ‘Class B’ victories came in those races, and he only fell behind Carlos Sainz Jr at Silverstone because of a well-timed safety car for the Mclaren driver. A mega qualifying lap in Monaco was an example of Ricciardo’s ability to put his car where it did not deserve to be on the grid. In Belgium, where – amid the emotion of Renault protege Anthoine Hubert’s fatal Formula 2 crash the previous day, and a damaged car – he finished 14th, calling it “one of my best drives ever”.

There were times when over-enthusiasm or frustration let him down, such as botched overtakes late on in France and Mexico, and an early clash with Kevin Magnussen in Brazil. But the sublime racecraft that made him F1’s best overtaker in his Red Bull days was still evident, even though it took a while to adjust his style to the Renault. Ricciardo probably knew it was his car, as well as his own brilliance, that made him so devastating in attack mode while driving for Red Bull. Accepting Renault’s weakness under braking early in the year went a long way to allowing him to understand the limitations of the car and how to drive accordingly. He characterises his major lesson from this year as “learning when to be sensible and when to try to get a bit more out of it”.

Ricciardo’s true ability has been known for a long time, so that was never in question. The big unknown was how he would respond to being in the midfield, especially when it became clear that Renault’s downturn in form left him in the middle of a grittier, less predictable fight. But Ricciardo has often thrived with his back against the wall. In that sense, Renault gave him plenty of chances to shine in 2019.

“The 2019 campaign was a sobering one for Ricciardo, as Renault only just saw off Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso”