Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo feels the midfield pattern we may see in Australian GP won’t remain the same throughout the 2019 F1 season.
Following his move from Red Bull Racing to Renault from 2019 F1 season onward, for the time being Ricciardo will have to fight it out in the midfield rather than the top end, with Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull heading the front end.
Renault stepped up its game finishing fourth in 2018, but it will still take some time for the French manufacture to penetrate the Top 3, as also admitted by Ricciardo. It will once again fight in the midfield, where the Australian feels there is no set order.
He is of the view that the closeness between most of the teams will mean, the pattern will keep changing throughout the 2019 F1 season. “I think for sure there will be some change, but where it is, I don’t know,” he said to the media including FormulaRapida.net.
“I do think at the front, the red cars looks faster at the moment, so maybe they will take over the silver for the time being but we will see in Melbourne. For the midfield, it is going to change [I believe].
“I don’t think what we see in Melbourne will be the trend all year, I think it is going to change all throughout the season. Its been an interesting test where everyone has been able to pull out some quick laps even if it’s a new tyre.
“[Although] I am not sure if it is the new tyres, but still it is quite fast. Once we get in race conditions, everyone is in same fuel load and the same track at the same time, we will see where everybody is actually.
“Alfa [Romeo] looked good but I think everyone had their moment of shining [in the eight days]. Of course you are going to be guaranteed with the Top 3 teams who will be at the front, it is just how close we can be to them.”
From the numbers in the two Barcelona tests, Renault looks to be in a good shape but the Haas car looked in a sound touch too. Apart from Williams, the likes of Alfa Romeo, Racing Point, Toro Rosso and McLaren will certainly pose some challenge too.
Having lost Red Bull as their benchmark, Renault will have to see how they stack up against McLaren, who will run the same power unit. The Woking-based team had a sound run with some quick times, but Ricciardo is not putting them ahead just yet.
About his own team’s chances against the Top 3 teams, Ricciardo was open to admit as alluded earlier that it will take more time for Renault to be on par with them. “It will probably take a while to be honest,” he said after his Barcelona run.
“I do think that some teams have put in some good laps in the tests. There probably will be or I hope there is a fight between more teams but in the real front fight, we don’t have the pace yet which the likes of Ferrari have shown.
“It will take some time but that’s not unexpected, obviously, we want to be there from the first race, but we have got to be realistic. There is still work to do but what Lewis [Hamilton] said is right, it will be pretty interesting up front.”
Check out all the data from the Barcelona pre-season tests
Renault’s chassis head feels teams are ‘super close’ for F1 2019