Renault opened its advantage over nearest rival Haas to 15 points in the battle for fourth place in the wake of both Carlos Sainz Jr. and Nico Hulkenberg classifying in the top 10 in Singapore.
Renault held a commanding advantage in the scrap for fourth in the standings mid-season but Haas caught its rival in recent weeks and drew level courtesy of Romain Grosjean’s sixth in Italy.
But Renault pulled 10 points clear when Grosjean was excluded for a technical irregularity, and the manufacturer added another five to its advantage courtesy of eighth for Sainz Jr. and 10th for Hulkenberg in Singapore.
It marked the first time both Sainz Jr. and Hulkenberg scored points since the French Grand Prix, but the pair felt more was within reach.
“We had an advantage with tyre strategy starting in 12th and we made a good start to boost our possibility of getting into the top 10,” said Sainz Jr.
“Eighth isn’t bad, but I would have preferred to finish higher up the order.”
Hulkenberg felt that having to stop early to discard the Hypersofts on which he started, having made Q3, compromised his prospects.
“Well we stopped early, trying to undercut, we had that plan, maybe that was a bit ambitious, a bit early, easy to say in hindsight,” he said.
“I wasn’t in traffic but I caught up to Checo [Perez], who was stuck behind Sergey [Sirotkin], he was pretty slow, I obviously profited when they collided but yeah not the greatest race.
“It was always going to be difficult with Hypersofts and unfortunately that came true.
“I would have liked to take four or six [points], could have been possible from car pace, but didn’t have a great start, straight away lost two positions, so straightaway was on the backfoot, costly.”
