Daniel Ricciardo has plans for team building at Renault ahead of the 2020 F1 season, when it kick-starts with the Barcelona pre-season test.
Moving to Renault from Red Bull Racing in 2019, Ricciardo settled in quite well at the French F1 team, as he beat his teammate Nico Hulkenberg in the driver’s championship, even though, the initial races like Australia and Bahrain were tough on the Australian.
While Ricciardo is quite happy with how his inaugural season at Renault went – regarding both team relationships and on-track performances – he has, however, got some plans and ideas for being more ‘present’ in the team, ahead of the 2020 F1 season.
“I’ve got some ideas of things I can do more, or better,” said Ricciardo to media including FormulaRapida.net. “I feel like I’ve integrated myself into the team well in 2019, but when I look back, and I’m like, ‘ok, I can do more’.”
“And so, I want to have a bit more, I guess, presence, before the season starts, before testing, but also have some things we can do together as a team, to like, get us into the season. Not like technically, but just as a team unit.
“I want to get to Barcelona feeling like we, yeah, we got some momentum, or any before the season starts.” Ricciardo wishes to also include Cyril Abiteboul and new teammate Esteban Ocon. He then elaborated more on the aforementioned ‘ideas’.
He remarked some of them as spending more time at the factory, to build more of a relationship with his co-workers, who he can often become distant from. “I got some ideas,” said Ricciardo. “It’s nothing yet, but like, even just some team morale stuff.
“In simple terms, we can call it like team building. But I think more importantly, just to spend time with the team, away from the track and at the track, so even with Cyril sometimes it’s like “hi” and that’s all you get over a weekend, ’cause we are busy.
“So you don’t always get quality time at a circuit, and I feel that to take this relationship to the next level, I feel getting time away from the track is good, and just having that feeling, like even for the guys within the team.
“If they know each other a bit more, then they’ll wanna work a little bit harder for each other, and make some good stuff happen.” Renault will be hoping to return to fourth in 2020 after losing out to their customer team, McLaren, in 2019.
Here’s Esteban Ocon on Abu Dhabi test being an advantage
Here’s Daniel Ricciardo on his move to Renault
Here’s Daniel Ricciardo on his personal high and lows of F1 2019
Hulkenberg not bitter about no F1 podiums but Brazil 2012 still hurts
The story was written by Duncan Leahy and edited by Darshan Chokhani