Renault lacked “technical leadership” after £15 million investment

Renault finished 2018 fourth in the championship and looked set to make further moves forward throughout 2019 but ended up struggling throughout the year, even with upgrades being brought in, finishing fifth behind McLaren.
 
That prompted a review internally of Renault’s organisation, leading to some restricting being made within the team, with Abiteboul specifying a need for a stronger technical front, bringing in Pat Fry.
 
“It looks like we were missing something in the technical leadership of the team, in the ability to pull all the resources that we put together,” he told Motorsport.com.

“We talk a lot about figures, and headline numbers like 750 people in Enstone now. It's huge, and there has been lots of investments: £15 million of investment.

“But you know, all of that needs to be driven by a force. And I felt that, and we felt that, we were a bit weak in technical leadership. Therefore, that led to the recruitment of Pat.”

Abiteboul feels they had a good quality car during the first half of the season but failed to take advantage due to different factors.

“I think in the first part of this season we had a decent car,” he added.

“But it was not very visible, because we did not manage to get the results or score the points that we could have at the time, given the theoretical competitiveness of our car against our competitors.

“There were different types of reasons for that: reliability, the engine, operation at the track, a bit of pitstop, and a bit of strategy.

“Plus a bit of drivers, also particularly Daniel [Ricciardo] getting used to the car. That unfortunately cost us some points at the time where we were in decent shape.”