How Ricciardo helped Renault rediscover its swagger

Renault's stuttering progress back towards the front of the grid has been a persistent thread within Formula 1's tangled narratives since the company returned as a manufacturer in 2016. It's taken tentative steps up the order only to slip back again - particularly whenever it approaches that unbridgeable chasm which has existed between F1's top three teams and the gaggle of midfielders seemingly doomed to hope, at best, for fourth.

Sceptics have, rightly, asked questions: was Renault too optimistic in expecting to return to winning ways within a five-year timespan? In thinking it could do so while spending less than the top three? In persisting with engine and chassis manufacturing operations in different countries?

Indubitably these were the right questions to ask - but, amid the many curveballs 2020 has thrown at the world championship, the competitive picture is changing. Renault has emerged as a strong contender for what might, given Ferrari's implosion, become third place.

Speaking to GP Racing during the Russian Grand Prix weekend before the Eifel Grand Prix in which he nails Renault's first podium since its return as a manufacturer, Daniel Ricciardo is clear that real substance rather than good luck is underpinning Renault's renaissance.

"The best example," he says, "is probably last weekend [the Tuscan GP at Mugello] we were kind of pissed off with fourth place. As far as the culture goes, that's a big change - the expectation and belief that there's more, or knowing there's more, and just raising the bar.

"The team has a lot more belief than it did 18 months ago, that's the biggest thing. Obviously I had that at Red Bull - it was a group of winners and they had that swagger about them. Certainly I feel Renault are showing signs of that now."

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this return to form is that 2020 was shaping up to be an 'interim year' with a car package largely carried over from the previous season.

Renault's stated focus had been on the new technical rules originally scheduled for 2021, and to that end had restructured the Enstone-based technical team: chassis technical director Nick Chester departed last December, while head of aerodynamics Peter Machin was replaced by the returning Dirk de Beer. James Rodgers was promoted to chief aerodynamicist. Only in February did former Benetton, McLaren and Ferrari man Pat Fry slide his feet under the desk vacated by Chester.

At that point Renault was playing down immediate expectations, and with good reason. Last year's car, the RS19, had shown flashes of promise but in-season developments were ineffectual, chiefly because Renault - in common with several other teams - was struggling to simulate the turbulent wake of the front wheels accurately, particularly when steering lock was applied and the car was in yaw. The result was confidence-sapping inconsistency in downforce levels through long corners.

"In 2019 we weren't performing worse than we were the previous season, it's just the gain we'd made versus the rest of the field wasn't good enough to keep that position" Cyril Abiteboul

Suspension kinematics have also been a problem since 'Team Enstone' was forced to shelve its trick interconnected hydraulic systems under its previous ownership, and the cars have generally been too stiff-legged ever since.

But while the RS20 essentially carried over much of the previous design, key aerodynamic changes have provided more development runway. There's now more space between the leading edges of the sidepods and the front wheels, for instance, enabling better management of their wake.

"In F1 small differences can make a big impact on the overall results," says team principal Cyril Abiteboul. "Every year [since 2016] it's been a case of marginal gains over our previous performance, but the others are improving too.

"So sometimes these marginal gains were putting us in what looked like a nice position, such as in 2018 when we finished fourth in the championship. In 2019 we weren't performing worse than we were the previous season, it's just the gain we'd made versus the rest of the field wasn't good enough to keep that position.

"There's also a latency between you making a decision and that translating into an effect on track, even though it's typical in F1 to be assessed by the outside world on a weekly basis! So, frankly, what you're seeing on track at the moment is probably a reflection of last year's team and you're yet to see what we are today.

"There have been lots of changes - probably more last year than this year - so I'd say what you're seeing at the moment is the result of what we've been doing over the past few seasons."

Cars within the midfield pack possess a variety of different strengths and weaknesses, all of which leads to a shifting balance of power from track to track. But there's no evidence to suggest the picture so far has been skewed by the configuration of the circuits that make up 2020's make-do-and-mend calendar favouring Renault's car.

Quite the opposite: the aforementioned Mugello is garlanded with the kind of long, high-speed corners which would have flushed out the RS19's inherent pendulousness. And yet Ricciardo was high enough up the order to cheekily pass the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas at the third restart.

In Austria last year, Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg laboured in the midfield to 12th and 13th, a net gain for Ricciardo of two places from qualifying and a drop of one for Hülkenberg. This July, Renault looked much sharper during the two rounds at the Red Bull Ring, albeit pegged back by overheating in the races.

"There is a step being made," says Ricciardo. "Your first impression is normally a lasting one, especially with a race car. There was a bit of a step in winter testing, but to be honest it still wasn't massive. It was when we came to race one in Austria - a circuit that was quite poor for the team last year.

"I remember going out in FP1 and thinking, 'Ooh, the rear's got some grip - I can get to full throttle quite a lot easier.' So there was certainly a step [again]. Obviously other teams have also made progress but I felt last year, a lot of the time we were just hanging on in the midfield, and now we're really in [it] at the moment."

From a technical point of view, Renault may have benefitted from the enforced COVID-19 hiatus, during which the two-week gap between testing and the start of the season expanded to four months. Abiteboul argues that the amount of carry-over in the RS20, a design which will now be 'frozen' for the most part during 2021, means the first Renault to properly benefit from Pat Fry's input from the ground up will be the 2022 car. But Abiteboul also alludes to a "new dynamic" within the aerodynamics department, and that Fry has taken certain aspects of the technical operation to "the next level".

Essentially Renault has been able to mature a development package which had originally been planned for June or July, and which delivered a real uplift in competitiveness - something which can't be said of many previous upgrade packages. If the season had run to the original calendar, Renault might have contested the first handful of races with a car Ricciardo considered to be not much of an advance on its predecessor.

"It's not like we're missing something major against Red Bull, it's the sum of many small differences which unfortunately Daniel can have no impact on. He's not bringing car competitiveness, but he brings many other things - such as motivation" Cyril Abiteboul

Ricciardo himself has had a tangible effect, despite his impending defection to McLaren. Pre-season he'd had to spend considerable time batting off suggestions that Renault might instinctively rally round and favour his new (French) team-mate, Esteban Ocon. Instead, Ricciardo - initially regarded as a trophy hire when he joined Renault from Red Bull ahead of the 2019 season - has quietly outpaced Ocon on the track and eschewed politics in the garage while underlining his credentials as undisputed team leader.

"There's a perception in the outside world that a driver can come in and bring immediate competitiveness," says Abiteboul, clicking his fingers for emphasis. "Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that, and it comes down to these marginal differences between the cars.

"It's not like we're missing something major against Red Bull, it's the sum of many small differences which unfortunately Daniel can have no impact on. He's not bringing car competitiveness, but he brings many other things - such as motivation.

"He's a people person. We have a group of people who are working extremely well - just look at the progression of his very young race engineer, Karel Loos. It's been a remarkable ramp up and he's been able to scale up his game. That's very much down to the way he's been working with Daniel and the same is true for all his side of the garage.

"It's also important [since hiring Daniel] that there's now nowhere to hide. I know some people in the F1 community had doubts about Renault's commitment and it was important to make a statement internally and externally, to the partners, to the media, to the fans, making a statement of intent. It puts pressure on everyone to do what's required to get the momentum going.

"You saw a number of changes to the organisation over the past year that may or may not have happened without Daniel, but we had him, the competitiveness was not what we wanted, so we had no choice but to make decisions which aren't easy to make with long-lasting team members."

Trackside operations are also noticeably sharper: the pitstops are generally slicker, the strategies less ploddingly route-one (for the past few seasons it's seemed as if the default setting has been to 'go long' on harder-compound tyres in the first stint).

Ricciardo talks about "trying to create that level of intensity, that kind of purpose" he'd seen in the Red Bull garage, and which "wasn't quite there at the start of last year". There are also more debriefs outside the race-weekend environment, involving factory staff as well as the drivers and race engineers, in which a greater depth of analysis is encouraged.

"I'm not gonna take all the credit for it," says Ricciardo. "But there is certainly a change. One thing we've noticed - by 'we' I mean me and my trainer, Michael, who gives me feedback - during a race, if I do a good overtake or have a good result, the team is getting excited. It's kind of a unit and you need that camaraderie, that sense of belief in all the members."

Developments in the boardroom - a place whose occupants have not always had cause to smile upon Renault's F1 project - have given further cause for positivity. Following a long period of uncertainty in the wake of former boss Carlos Ghosn's disgrace in Japan, the denizens of Enstone and Viry-Chatillon now have an ally in the form of new CEO Luca de Meo, long considered a protege of Sergio Marchionne during his service in the Fiat Chrysler empire.

De Meo is what automotive folk like to call 'a car guy' rather than a bean counter, and one of his first calls was to inject some juice into Renault's sporting sub-brand, Alpine. In support of that, Renault F1 will rebrand as Alpine next season.

Further change is blowing in - in the form of Fernando Alonso, who brings a reputation for finding tenths of a second nobody else can, at a cost of being an often prickly and divisive personality. Abiteboul insists the team is ready for what's coming.

"He [Alonso] is probably a bit more aggressive and pushy. Talking about very important stuff with Daniel isn't that easy because he's actually quite shy, he's not going to be very direct about things that don't work. It took me some time to decode and understand what's really behind that smile.

"Fernando is a completely different animal. He will be blunt on the engine, the car, the strategy, the organisation. We know that. Both of them are commanding us to do our absolute best, one by telling you the way it is, the other one through his expectations and the standard of driver he is."

This is patently a team that's lifted its game in response to the velvet-glove treatment. What awaits when that is replaced with the clunking fist?