“Get him into turn one” – Renault duo Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon ready to challenge Sergio Perez at Bahrain Grand Prix

“Get him into turn one” – Renault duo Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon have plans to ‘bully’ Sergio Perez at Bahrain GP and overtake Racing Point in the points tally.

Daniel Ricciardo, in trademark style, has thrown in a challenge to Racing Point driver Sergio Perez. Earlier today, the latter qualified P5 for tomorrow’s Bahrain GP, just ahead of the Renault duo of Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon. But Ricciardo has a plan in place to take over – Perez on the track and Racing Point on the points table.

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“Perez just got us, but he’s there and obviously with Esteban right there as well, the perfect picture for us would be for us both to get him into turn one, hold firm and get some points back that we missed two weeks ago. His long runs are good, normally he’s been good at managing tyres, so we really have to put pressure on him and in a way try to bully him at the start and try to force his strategy a little bit.”

“I think if he gets off in clear air he’ll be hard to beat. With both of us around him, hopefully that’s enough to make a difference for the first few hundred metres.”

Also read: “We don’t want to have an escalating fuel and oil war”- Toto Wolff on new F1 engines plan

Daniel Ricciardo has sympathy for Esteban Ocon

Renault has one of the most lopsided intra-team qualifying this season, 14-1 in favour of Daniel Ricciardo. Today was extremely close though, with the Australian beating the Frenchman by just 0.002 secs in Q3.

“They’re the ones that really hurt. I don’t always sympathise with my opponents but I felt a little bad there for Esteban. Obviously, the quali record isn’t really in his favour this year and when you get ones like that I’m sure he’s thinking ‘what do I have to do?'”

Also read: Daniel Ricciardo will be missed at Renault after he moves to McLaren, admits executive director Marcin Budkowski

About the author

Subham Jindal

A Red - be it Manchester United or Ferrari. Hails from the hills of Kalimpong, Darjeeling. Aspiring to become a respected Sports Management professional.

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