Ricciardo aiming for first Renault podium after 'genuine' P3 in FP2

Renault's Daniel Ricciardo expressed his hopes for a first podium with Renault at this weekend's 70th Anniversary Grand Prix after finishing P3 in FP2, a result he called 'genuine' for the team.

Ricciardo finished just off the podium in fourth at last weekend's British Grand Prix after taking advantage of tyre issues for Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz to equal his best finish with Renault in F1. 

The Australian driver noted he was happy with the position, which saw him finish ahead of his former Red Bull teammate, Max Verstappen.

He was confident that if similar track conditions and temperatures are seen for Sunday's race as were seen in FP2, then there may be a possibility to score his first podium for the French team and the first for Renault since its return to F1 in 2016.

"We got out there, I did another run on the hard and that was a really good run and then found a good bit, a chunk, on the soft as well, so it was nice. Karel, my engineer, said, ‘That’s P3,’ I was like, ‘Alright, let’s do this in quali!." Ricciardo beamed after FP2.

“If we do what we did this afternoon, then yeah. And I think that was genuine for the track conditions. We did a few changes through the session, and I really felt a big step with one of the changes we made, and I was like, ‘This is a pretty good race car right now.’

“So I think we can hang in there. We’ll see. If we’re here in quali, I think that would still exceed what probably our expectation is now, but I think we can still do a very good job.”