30/06/2019
NEWS STORY
Renault F1 Team missed out on scoring points in the 2019 Formula 1 myWorld Austrian Grand Prix with Daniel Ricciardo twelfth and Nico Hulkenberg close behind in thirteenth in Spielberg on Sunday.
After a strong start, Nico made up three places from fifteenth on the grid and closely lingered on the edge of the top ten.
Any hopes of scoring points faded towards the latter stages of the 71-lap race with Daniel overtaking Nico for twelfth place on the last lap. Daniel had dropped two positions by the end of lap one, but recovered well throughout the race.
It's the first time since Spain the team has not scored points.
Nico started from fifteenth on Pirelli's new Medium (yellow) tyres, pitting on lap 26 for new Hard (white tyres). Daniel started in twelfth on new Mediums, pitting on lap 46 for new Softs.
Nico Hulkenberg: "We can't be happy with this weekend. We had multiple issues on the car today and it made it hard work out there. We didn't have a points worthy car today and we didn't have the pace to get by anyone during the middle or latter stages. Over the years, Austria has proved to be quite a particular circuit and one we don't tend to do so well at. We'll use this week off, dive into the data, and see what's going on to make some improvements ahead of Silverstone."
Daniel Ricciardo: "It was a tough weekend, for sure. From lap one today it was tricky and I struggled for grip. We improved as the race progressed, managed a decent stint on the Softs at the end, but it was probably a bit too late. We need to figure out why this weekend was so tough. There's stuff we can improve, but I won't put it all down to the car. I'll look at myself and see what I can do better as well. Something wasn't right this weekend and Nico shared the same feelings too. We'll do our best to figure it out and get on top of it."
Cyril Abiteboul, Team Principal: "Clearly, it's not a good weekend. Although we had the pace to be slightly higher up on the grid, the track exposed weaknesses of our car, similar to previous races but in a more exacerbated fashion this weekend. We need to identify if there was anything specific with set-ups or simply a feature of the chassis on which we must work."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spielberg, here.