Ricciardo still understanding “magnitude of changes” at Renault

Daniel Ricciardo says he is still adapting to life at Renault having grown comfortable at Red Bull in Formula 1.

The Australian driver made the headline-grabbing move to Renault this winter after spending effectively his entire career in the Red Bull fold.

Both Ricciardo and Renault teammate Nico Hulkenberg narrowly missed out on reaching Q3 in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, with the German driver edging his new teammate in 11^th place by 0.008s at his home race in Melbourne.

With Ricciardo set to start the 2019 opener in 12^th place, he feels he hasn’t been naïve in getting up to speed at Renault but concedes it is taking a while for him to adapt to the French manufacturer which has a less stable car compared to what he’s been used to.

“I don’t want to say I underestimated but I am certainly understanding, it is taking a bit of time to figure out the magnitude of changes,” Ricciardo said. “With Red Bull I was so comfortable with the car that ok two steps up on front wing and I knew exactly what that would do.

“Now at the moment, two steps, three steps, I am not sure to what extent it is going to change. So little things like that.

“It is coming, I’ve just got to build that library of knowledge up in my head as quickly as possible.

“The exciting thing is that once that does start to flow a lot more naturally that will not only give me more confidence, but also give my engineer more confidence. That is then going to start to give everyone a good feeling.”

Ricciardo was banned from taking part in the 2018 post-season test in Abu Dhabi due to his Red Bull contract obligations, leaving him less time to familiarise himself with Renault compared to the rest of the F1 driver changes in 2019.