Fixing Renault problems as an engineer would 'rattle my brain' - Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo says that uncovering the issues that Renault is currently facing as an engineer or aerodynamicist would "rattle my brain".

Last time out in Austria, Renault failed to score points for the first time since the Spanish Grand Prix as it struggled to unlock pace from the R.S. 19.

Ricciardo is confident that the team has learned from what went wrong during the weekend, as it explored a different setup direction during free practice. 

"It wasn’t a fun one for us really," the Australian said. "We obviously got pretty deep into it after and tried to figure out why we were off the pace all weekend.

"I feel we learned some things with set-up and I think we kind of just started in a direction which we kept pursuing from Friday, thinking it was the right way to go, but I think in hindsight it wasn’t.

"It’s probably more just a set-up misdirection we went for as opposed to anything crazy we found on the car.

"I was hoping to find a cracked chassis or something like that! I think the car does have a little bit of a sweet spot and I think we had worked towards that the last few weekends, getting those Q3s and building that confidence within myself and that momentum

"We kind of shifted a little bit away from that in Austria, for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time from a set-up point of view and all that.

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"Sometimes I’m glad I’m not an aerodynamicist or an engineer because it would rattle my brain.

"For, personally, driving the car, I know where I’m comfortable with it and I know where I like it and when we start going down a certain direction that’s where we run into problems, under braking or whatever.

"There’s an area where I certainly feel more comfortable and I believe the car is better in that phase."

Renault currently sits fifth in the constructors' standings, 20 points behind McLaren, who occupies the 'best of the rest' position.