Team Talk - Sunday in Barcelona

Renault

Nico Hulkenberg
“P6 is a great result for us and very rewarding too. It’s been our lucky day with some of the top cars out at the start, but also later on in the race too, so we clearly benefited from that. At the same time, we were there at every opportunity to do a good job and the guys did a great second pit stop to enable us to pass the Sauber. I feel very comfortable in the car but we still have work ahead of us to catch up our closest competitors.”

Jolyon Palmer
“We went for an aggressive strategy today given my starting position on the grid. I think it’s fair to say it didn’t bring us the reward we wanted. I wasn’t able to get the pace out of the car when it was needed, however we were going better on the final set of tyres. My job now is to sit down with my engineers and analyse the race whilst we also have a good look at the car too. I’m determined that we will do better in Monaco.”

Cyril Abiteboul, managing director
“A fantastic race result after a difficult qualifying session yesterday. It goes to show, you should never let your head go down and you should always maximise every opportunity. Nico took advantage of a great start, the pit crew delivered exactly what was required during the race and also a bit of luck fell our way. We showed good execution of strategy and pit stops and our race pace was better than that of our competitors, Haas, Williams and Toro Rosso. It is positive that we continue to improve in these areas, however we still have to work hard to understand how to maximise the performance of the R.S.17; this weekend was rather unusual for us because our race pace was better than our qualifying performance. For Jolyon it was a tough Grand Prix and we are dedicated to understanding what we can do to improve this. We head next to Monaco, a circuit which presents very unique challenges, eager to continue the team’s upward trajectory.”