The major lesson Ricciardo learned in Renault's poor 2019

Daniel Ricciardo knew his first Formula 1 season with Renault would be a winless one.

But he expected more than scraping his way into the top 10 in the drivers' championship late on, and watching his team get comprehensively beaten by its engine customer McLaren.

The 2019 campaign was a sobering one for Ricciardo. After picking up seven victories with Red Bull, the uncertainty around its new partner Honda and a very financially attractive offer from Renault - worth more than $20million a season - encouraged him to jump ship.

There were clearly competitive reasons at play as well. As a works team that had just finished fourth in 2018, it was fair to consider Renault the best-placed entity to break free of the best-of-the-rest tangle and close the gap to F1's big three.

But Renault's 2019 season went in the opposite direction. It slipped to fifth in the championship, only just seeing off Red Bull's junior team Toro Rosso, while Ricciardo lingered in 12th in the drivers' standings with just four races to go.

Renault's flaws as a constructor and a race team were exposed by fluctuating performance and poor reliability at various points, and these factors made it a trying year.

Renault and Ricciardo endured an up-and-down season, from the lows of a double-DNF - Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg stopped just seconds apart - in Bahrain and disqualification in Japan, to the highs of a fourth-place start in Canada and best-ever team result of fourth and fifth in Italy.

"The high was kind of in-line [with expectations], a top five, or whatever I knew was there," says Ricciardo.

"But the lows, at times, we were scratching our heads - like, 'We shouldn't be this far down, we're not going to be a top five car maybe every race, but to be running P14 or something, we thought we were done with this'. "But the lows actually have been the most fuel for the fire and the high side of the lows has been very positive - personally, wanting to get back to the front, but also even the way the team turned those around. I don't feel they got into a slump of 'we were kidding ourselves, this is where we belong'."

Through it all, Ricciardo found ways to excel. That he scored four 'Class B' victories in a year team-mate Hulkenberg scored none is telling. Hulkenberg ran Ricciardo close in qualifying but Ricciardo upped his game when it mattered.

There were times when Ricciardo's temperament let him down. But the sublime racecraft that made him F1's best overtaker in his Red Bull days was still evident

When the Renault was at its fastest, Ricciardo got the job done. He scored midfield pole in China, Canada, Britain and Italy, and three of his Class B victories came in those races.

The only one he missed was at Silverstone, but he only fell behind Carlos Sainz Jr because a well-timed safety car helped the McLaren driver. A mega qualifying lap in Monaco was an example of Ricciardo's ability to put his car where it did not deserve to be on the grid, and only strategy stopped him being best-of-the-rest there.

He massively rated his effort in Belgium, where - amid the emotion of Renault protege Anthoine Hubert's fatal Formula 2 crash the previous day, and with a damaged car - he finished 14th.

"Everyone will look at me [and say] 'Spa, what happened? You were nowhere!'," Ricciardo admits. "But it was a race where I got hit in Turn 1 and we had a lot of floor damage. And to be honest, the car was quite scary to drive after that. We had a lot less downforce.

"I was probably flat through Eau Rouge less than half a dozen times the whole race. That gives you probably an idea of how scary it was through there. I just drove with some level of attention and some form of inspiration that day.

"On a personal level, that was one of my best drives ever."

There were times when Ricciardo's temperament let him down. Whether it was over-enthusiasm or frustration only he knows, but he botched overtakes late on in France and Mexico, and had an early clash with Kevin Magnussen in Brazil.

But the sublime racecraft that made him F1's best overtaker in his Red Bull days was still evident, even though it took a while to adjust his style to the Renault. Ricciardo probably knew it was his car, as well as his own brilliance, that made him so devastating in attack mode while driving for Red Bull.

Accepting the concrete proof of that at the start of the year, when he discovered his Renault's weakness under braking, went a long way to allowing him to understand the limitations of the car underneath him, and how to drive accordingly.

He characterises his major lesson from this year as "learning when to be sensible and when to try and get a bit more out of it".

"I kind of want to say it is understanding how to be perfect," adds Ricciardo. "It's so easy to overdrive and to try to get that extra tenth and you end up losing a tenth. It's trying to remain composed.

"I think it's taught me probably just a bit of discipline over anything else. Because the long and short is you're always trying to drive as hard and fast as you can."

Ricciardo's true ability has been known for a long time, so that was never in question this year.

The big unknown was how he would respond to being in the midfield, especially when it became clear Renault's downturn in form left him in the middle of a grittier, less predictable fight.

But Ricciardo has often thrived with his back against the wall. And in that sense, Renault gave him plenty of chances to shine in 2019.