Date published: September 3 2020
Esteban Ocon believes Renault are now in the battle for P3 in the Constructors’ Championship after their double-points finish at Spa.
Daniel Ricciardo put his R.S.20 P4 on the grid for the Belgian Grand Prix, whilst Ocon qualified P6 to secure Renault’s best qualifying performance since returning to Formula 1 as a constructor.
And they certainly kept that form up in the race as Ricciardo crossed the line in P4, and may well have had a run at the Red Bull of Max Verstappen if he had a few extra laps.
Ocon meanwhile was able to overtake Verstappen’s team-mate Alex Albon to finish the race in P5.
Next up is Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, the venue where Renault scored their best finish of 2019 with P4 and P5.
So, with the season only close to half complete, Ocon believes Renault can take it to their midfield rivals and claim P3 in the Constructors’ Championship for themselves.
“Yeah, we can. We can. There’s 10 more races to go, so we are only in the beginning of the season, more or less,” said Ocon via Autosport.
“There’s a long, long way of course, but it’s very nice to see that we are coming into that fight very nicely.
“We need to get consistent at scoring and we don’t want to have a second Barcelona for sure.
“But when there are opportunities like this coming, what’s important is to get the points and that’s what we’ve done this weekend.
“I think it is very, very encouraging.
“To be there with the Red Bull, it’s nice. Very, very nice. We need to do that obviously a lot more consistently.
“We seem to be quick as soon as we’re running a little bit on low downforce. Silverstone was the case and in Belgium we were quick again.
“It’s a shame there’s not two Spa races, obviously, but we’ll have a Monza so we should be quick again.”
Awesome move by @OconEsteban 🚀
Thanks for the view, @LandoNorris 🍿#BelgianGP 🇧🇪 #F1 pic.twitter.com/7bvUAZ8pjR
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 30, 2020
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Ricciardo is also very confident going into the Italian GP, saying Renault will rightly be expected to be on form.
“I think it can certainly be expected from us, you know, on these low downforce circuits,” he said.
“Coming into Monza next week, I think we can expect to be competitive again.
“That would be certainly a pretty strong assumption at least from my side.”
Renault are currently P6 in the Constructors’ Championship but only nine points behind McLaren in P3.
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