Ricciardo keen to work on team building at Renault

Daniel Ricciardo is eager to have a greater presence at Renault away from Formula 1 weekends, identifying greater team building as a way to take his relationship with the team “to the next level”.

Ricciardo left Red Bull at the end of 2018 to join Renault, leading the team through a difficult campaign that saw it drop to fifth in the constructors’ championship behind customer team McLaren.

As part of Renault’s bid to recover in 2020, Ricciardo has said he would like to be more hands-on with his colleagues away from the track to unite the team more.

“For next year I’ve got some ideas of things I can do more or better. I feel like I integrated myself into the team well this year, but I look back and am like I can do more,” Ricciardo said.

“I want to have a bit more presence before the season starts, before testing, but also have some ideas which of things we can do together as a team to get us into the season - not just technically, but as a team unit I want to get to Barcelona feeling like we got some momentum before the season even starts.

“Even some team morale stuff, call it team building and some activities. More importantly to spend time with the team, even away from the track.

“At the track even like with Cyril [Abiteboul, Renault team principal] sometimes it is 'hi' and that is all you get over the weekend because we are busy. So you don’t always get good quality time at the circuit.

“I feel that to take this relationship to the next level, getting time away from the track is good. Just having that feeling, even for the guys, if they know each other a bit more, they will want to work a little bit harder for each other and make some good stuff happen.”