Back on the podium, Cyril Abiteboul hopes Daniel Ricciardo’s P3 turns the Renault team into “addicts” for success.
The last time Renault stood on the podium under the Renault banner was in 2011 while the team’s last podium, under the Lotus name, was in 2015.
It has been a long wait but one that finally ended at Sunday’s Eifel Grand Prix.
Ricciardo, who had been knocking on the door of the top three in the previous four races, raced his way from sixth on the grid to third at the chequered flag.
“It’s clearly a very emotional moment, it’s a great feeling,” Abiteboul told Autosport.
“That podium may not be the end of everything, and the ultimate target of our journey in F1.
“In particular the results that manufacturers want, we want more than that, but there always needs to be a first.
“And that first podium here, that moment with Daniel, at a place like this one, is a great moment.
“We need to take also the positive emotion.”
We seriously can't wait to see this ??✍️
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The team boss is hoping that Sunday’s success will be the tipping point in turning the Renault team into “addicts” for success.
He continued: “The amount of work that goes into a programme like this one, and I’m not just talking about me, I’m talking about the 1000 more team members that compose this team.
“They need a bit of emotion, they need some energy.
“Keep in mind that we grew massively.
“Most of the people who have joined the team are young people, who have never experienced the emotion of winning, or even being on the podium.
“So we need to take that and we need to make them addicts to success for them to develop more, to build more success.
“And, yes, right now, we need a bit of circumstance to be on that podium.
“But the focus will be from Monday onwards first to understand the problems that we’ve had.”
Two Renault powered cars, Esteban Ocon’s and Lando Norris’s, failed to reach the chequered flag on Sunday.
"There once was a kid called Lando…" ?#EifelGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/ET8WYA5Pqw
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Abiteboul says the team needs to investigate the cause of the DNFs.
“It’s not just on our car, we also need to understand perfectly what’s been going on Norris’s car, I don’t know if it’s engine related or chassis related.
“But given the situation with McLaren at the end of our contract, the very tight championship position, we need to be beyond any reasonable doubt in relation to that.
“The team in Enstone equally needs to be on the hydraulic problems that we had on Esteban’s car, because that reliability is what’s going to determine the championship order on the evening of Abu Dhabi.”
Renault and McLaren are fighting Racing Point for third in the championship. Racing Point is currently P3 with 120 points, four ahead of McLaren and a further two up on Renault.
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