Cyril Abiteboul, Renault F1 Managing Director, says the team will be juicing Daniel Ricciardo’s experience for their development during the season.
Ricciardo, who had moved from Red Bull to Renault in 2018, will be switching the teams in 2021 to McLaren. He was impressed by their performance last year. Additionally, their decision to induct Mercedes power unit for next season cracked Australian from Renault.
Traditionally, leaving drivers are kept out of development with a no. 2 driver status. But French manufacturer wants to exploit the opportunity. Ricciardo will remain a part of development till the end of 2020.
The decision will help the manufacturer to improve their car in current season by exploiting Ricciardo’s experience.
In 2021, Formula 1 is introducing a new system that will restrict development attempts. The move came as to decrease the gap between upper tier teams and others.
Therefore, Abiteboul is not concerned over knowledge leaking to its competitor. McLaren won’t be able to exploit Ricciardo’s inside knowledge because of the new token system.
McLaren is switching its engine next year, which will require huge changes to car. It will have to utilize most of its available token for the new engine.
Abiteboul talk with press
Renault boss said: “There won’t be any preferential treatment between Esteban (Ocon) and Daniel on the back of his decision, because it’s not the policy of the team.
“It’s not also a necessity, let’s be honest, as I’m not fighting for any championship as we stand here right now.
“It would make absolutely no sense, and Daniel will be involved in the development process of the car.
“With the way that the structure is, that the cars are more or less frozen between this year and next year.
“Also McLaren will have to use all their tokens on the pure chassis, engine integration, so no performance development there. That will give us the opportunity to work extremely normally with Daniel.”
He added: “The only thing is he won’t be exposed to 2022.
“But frankly he would not be anyway, because it’s still a bit far away from a driver perspective, even though a substantial part of our workforce is already on to 2022.”
