Renault has outlined that the DRS failure which pitched Daniel Ricciardo into a high-speed spin on Tuesday has been repaired and will not re-occur.
Ricciardo was undertaking Renault’s programme on Tuesday morning but was sent into a spin on the approach to Turn 1 when the DRS link bar failed, meaning the flap flew off the R.S.19.
“The wing – we had a problem with the DRS mechanism, lost the link bar and then that allowed the flap to rotate,” confirmed Renault chief Nick Chester.
“Fortunately a fairy easy fix, we understood what the problem was and then we fixed it and have been running DRS [as normal].
“It is a bigger wing [than in 2018], more loaded, the geometry's changed as well for DRS, we've got a different line of action now for this year so yeah, it's just a detail change we needed to make.”
Chester added that Renault has been encouraged by its performance during the opening week of action but was keen to play down expectations.
“We are reasonably positive but there's different fuel loads, engine modes, DRS on or off, trying to pick it all apart is quite difficult,” he said.
“I think we're reasonably positive but we'll get a better idea when we see more race runs, more qualifying runs.
“I think there could be a whole group of cars that are quite tight, and we'll learn just how tight that is particularly in the next test.”
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