Ricciardo: Too easy to hide behind bad luck

The smile is still there, radiant on the face of Daniel Ricciardo. The Perth native remains this ball of energy with an infectious good humor. As the 2019 campaign prepares to slide slowly towards its summer break, the reasons to be bananas are not legion among the Yellow and Blacks. 

On the eve of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Renault is only 6th in the championship with a measly 39 units in the bag where the French manufacturer had 80 and occupied a solid 4th place in the Manufacturers' ranking at the same time last year. 

Recruited at a high price by the Losange, Ricciardo signed some solid races – Montreal immediately comes to mind – but we have the right to expect more from the Australian star, forced to retire following an exhaust problem at Hockenheim last Sunday. 

« It's too easy to blame bad luck, he reacted when asked how he managed the numerous glitches encountered by Renault in the first half of the year. When you run out of excuses, you may tend to give this reason.

But if you go back to the roots of different problems, you can almost always find a way to do things differently. We haven't really been flawless over the last few weekends of competition but I don't want to just say that it's bad luck. 

I think we can all do much better. I expected more but I also knew it would be complicated. Rome was not built in a day. But of course we need to make more significant progress in the second half of the season ».

His boss Cyril Abiteboul was very honest about the shortcomings of the R.S.19 chassis. Ricciardo tries to motivate himself by affirming that the next developments, which will not arrive immediately after the summer break, will be synonymous with a real step forward.

« I'm not depressed or even disappointed, concluded the one we nickname Honey Badger. I wish we could do better but I knew it would be complicated. Afterwards, if there is no tangible improvement by the end of the season, we will clearly be below the objectives of our progress table ».

We just hope that Renault has something other than the Coué Method in the pipeline to stick to its roadmap.