05/09/2020
NEWS STORY
Renault DP World F1 Team faced a mixed qualifying result for the Italian Grand Prix with Daniel Ricciardo seventh and Esteban Ocon twelfth at Monza.
It was an extremely close session under the Italian sunshine with Daniel's seventh place just 0.170secs from third, while Esteban was also 0.170secs on the wrong side of a top ten shootout slot.
Daniel began the day with the fourth fastest time in FP3 before a fuel pump failure ended his practice session early. The part was identified and replaced ahead of qualifying.
The first part of qualifying proved busy with both cars through: Daniel in eleventh and Esteban twelfth.
On their first runs in Q2, Daniel was ninth and Esteban narrowly outside the top ten in twelfth. Daniel had to abort his second push lap after running wide at Turn 5 with Esteban not improving his lap time to end twelfth. In Q3, Daniel qualified seventh, just over a tenth from the top three.
Daniel Ricciardo: "I'm feeling okay with seventh place as it was quite a good recovery through the session. We were a little behind in qualifying and we didn't really show the speed of yesterday or even this morning. It was good to reach Q3 and to get seventh means we're in amongst it on the grid and in a position where we can fight for positions. Our car in the race is strong, so I'm confident we can pick it up a bit and have a good one."
Esteban Ocon: "It wasn't a great session from us today and there were things we could have done better. In Q2, I was improving and then I lost the slipstream with Daniel going off in front of me. It's disappointing to miss out on Q3 by a small amount of time. It was hectic out there at times, but we knew it was going to be like that. Our performance was a bit down on what we thought, so we have a couple of things we need to sort. Tomorrow, our target is to score points."
Alan Permane, Sporting Director: "We have mixed feelings today with one car in the top ten and the other just outside. It was a decent qualifying for Daniel, although, we hoped for a little bit more especially after the performance last weekend. Having said that, the times were incredibly close between a group of cars. Esteban suffered with traffic and out laps, as did a lot of other drivers. We know how finding a tow is important in Monza and there was a bit of cat and mouse out there. There's no reason why both drivers can't have a good race tomorrow and make up some positions. We remain optimistic and we'll do the best we can on strategy to put both cars in the points."