Abiteboul looks back on a difficult weekend: “A very bad race”

Renault will not have a pleasant memory of the Austrian Styrian hills. On the Red Bull Rings, the French team recorded its first Grand Prix outside the points in 2018, the fault of the reliability of the machine and the men.

“It was a pretty dark scenario for us, recognize Cyril Abiteboul, general director of Renault Sport Racing. A very bad race. Of the 21 races in a year, there are always bad weekends, and this Grand Prix is ​​one of them. » The Yellow and Black quickly found themselves down to just one car, after the abandonment of Nico Hulkenberg.

The German broke an element of his turbo in the first laps. “The incident on the turbo seems to be known unfortunately. We have a measure relating to this problem planned for Silverstone (Britain) and it is by taking blows to the stomach that we measure our resilience and our ability to get back up, tries to reassure the French boss.

Too bad because Nico had a good start and could fight with the Force India. » Survivor, Carlos Sainz Jr was able to aim for the points before the second pit-stop cost him many seconds due to a lack of coordination from the mechanics (12th). But the team preferred to discuss an unexpected blistering problem.

“For Carlos, the strategy under the Virtual Safety Car was a good opportunity, but he suddenly had a huge, really huge tire blister. The condition of the rubbers was dramatic, we never experienced that this year, it was a shock. We reacted, which is why we called him back to make a second stop, which was not initially planned. »

Carrera que se fue complicando. Extreme deterioration has already been suffered at times. Analyze and improve! // A race that got more complicated with every lap. Extreme degradation didn't allow us to fight for points. Plenty of things to learn and analyze before Silverstone! pic.twitter.com/2pFecjypi8

- Carlos Sainz (@ Carlossainz55) July 1, 2018

The son of the double world rally champion (WRC) is not worried about the British Grand Prix at the end of the week. “We will have another opportunity and we will work a lot on preparing for Silverstone in the coming days. There's no reason why we can't be back in the top 10 and I'm very positive ahead of the next deadline. »

Renault nevertheless maintains its position as “best of the others” with fourth place in the Manufacturers’ ranking. (62 points), but is now only 13 points ahead of Haas, led by an in-form Romain Grosjean.

Discover the full report and analysis of the Austrian Grand Prix, produced by our special correspondents in Spielberg, in issue 2172 of AUTOhebdo, available tomorrow evening in digital version and this Wednesday on newsstands.