Yesterday, it delivered one of the most exciting races we’ve seen in a long time and Visa Cash App RB was in the mix, picking up another point in the Belgian Grand Prix courtesy of a tenth place finish for Daniel Ricciardo.
After a clear uptick in performance a week earlier in Hungary, we were keen to see how our car would perform on this very different track, the longest and one of the fastest on the calendar. We had to adopt an unusual approach to free practice and qualifying as the plan was for Yuki to use a new Power Unit, thus putting him over the total number allowed in the year – a common occurrence for everyone at this midpoint of the season – and so he would be starting the Belgian Grand Prix from the back of the grid. We therefore used his three hours of free practice to try various new solutions on the car, which we ran with a set-up biased towards the race during Saturday afternoon’s qualifying.
Daniel’s weekend was more straightforward and his long run pace looked good during a dry Friday. However, this being Spa, Saturday morning saw the rain poncho sellers doing a roaring trade just as they would do later that evening 400 kilometres away during the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in Paris. Everyone had to run the Intermediate tyres, with Daniel looking like a top ten contender, but we sent him out for his final Q2 run a fraction early as the rain was due to intensify, and he had to settle for 13th on the grid.
On Sunday, we treated Yuki’s race as a 90 minute test session, while with Daniel, we were targeting points as usual and put him on an aggressive strategy, the only driver to start on Soft tyres. It didn’t produce the early gains in position we had hoped for, but a gritty drive and a two-stop strategy got him as high as ninth, before he was caught by Ocon on fresher tyres right at the end.
So that’s the first 14 races done and dusted and in a few days it’s time for the compulsory F1 factory shutdown. An appropriate moment to let our Team Principal, Laurent Mekies, sum up the first half of the year: “From day one, our aim has been to race as credible competitors at the top of the mid-field. We enjoyed a very strong first half of the season in which we built up our performance race after race, scoring points at 10 out of 14 races, fighting hard for that P6 in the Constructors’ against very strong competitors. And one simple statistic says it all: this time last year we had scored nine points, today we’re on 34. Time to go on holiday before coming back determined to do even better, fighting fit to tackle the remaining ten races across four continents and umpteen time zones.”
