Two withdrawals in quick succession at Sakhir for the Renault F1 Team!
Like Charles Leclerc, the French team was also betrayed by the mechanics. Worse, Nico Hülkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo retired at the same time! The two drivers were holding the sixth and tenth places, respectively. Cruel outcome...
In Australia, only Nico Hülkenberg (7th) was able to bring points to Renault both as a team and as an engine manufacturer. This weekend, the French brand was determined to redeem itself and prove that it has indeed closed the gap with the top teams.
However, not everything went as planned for the French manufacturer. In qualifying, none of the Renault drivers managed to reach Q3, unlike the McLaren drivers. The French team was hoping to make up for it during the race. With a different strategy from their opponents, Daniel Ricciardo stayed in the top 10 for a long time (and even briefly held first place on lap 14!), just like his teammate, Nico Hülkenberg, who came back from seventeenth on the grid! The two teammates even engaged in a battle marked by a slight contact between the Australian’s front wing and the German’s right rear wheel.
Unfortunately for the brand with the diamond logo, the 55th lap would be a nightmare: Nico Hülkenberg and then Daniel Ricciardo both retired in the same corner, triggering the deployment of the Safety Car. For “Hulk,” who was in 6th place, an engine failure was the cause of his retirement. A few seconds later, it was Renault #3’s turn, in tenth position, to stop… in the yellow flag zone caused by Hülkenberg’s retirement!
« It’s really hard to swallow today. This sport can sometimes be so cruel », reacted the German driver in the interview area.
While adding: « we will look into what happened, but I lost all power quite suddenly and that was it. It was a fun race with a crazy first lap I had to survive before keeping my head down. The team did an excellent job with the two-stop strategy and we can take some positives from it. We need to be cleaner in the future and ensure we don’t face such disappointments again. »
The second disappointment is the terrible coincidence of Ricciardo’s retirement, forced to leave the car hastily by jumping overboard to avoid being electrocuted, as it was still charging. A pity for the Australian, who was able to fight in the middle of the pack this time. In hindsight, it would have been better to make two stops, even highlighted “the Honey Badger.”
« Toward the end, I couldn’t really defend myself against those coming up. I would have liked to fight more, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible. Then we had an issue with the MGU-K at the end of the race. It was a very eventful weekend with a lot of ups and downs. We will take the time to digest everything and come back stronger. »
Another amusing aspect of a decidedly comical race for Renault is that in any case, its retirement triggered the deployment of the safety car, which certainly saved Leclerc’s third place at the expense of Verstappen’s Red Bull, formerly powered by a Renault engine! Until Shanghai, the Renault F1 Team’s score remains stuck at six points, already far from the 31 points of the Austrian team’s third place.
#BahrainGP 🇧🇭 | T 55/57
Both Renaults retire at the same moment in the same place!
And Safety Car ⚠️ #F1 pic.twitter.com/3eyCNr0YIs
— Secteur F1 🚀🇺🇸 (@Secteur_F1) March 31, 2019
