MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo gets it going at Renault

Daniel Ricciardo resumed normal service at his third grand prix with Renault, delivering the best possible result with the machinery at his disposal.

After retirements at the first two GPs of the year, Ricciardo qualified in the top 10 for the first time since his switch from Red Bull and finished seventh in Shanghai – ‘best of the rest’ behind the six cars of Formula 1’s top three teams.

Mercedes finished one-two for the third time in a row, with Lewis Hamilton winning for the sixth time in China and 75th time in his career, ahead of Melbourne victor Valtteri Bottas.

Sebastian Vettel scored his first podium of the year amid controversy over Ferrari’s team orders. The Italian team’s 21-year-old star Charles Leclerc was ordered to “let Sebastian by”, responded with “but I’m pulling away” before complying, then asked “now what?” as he kept pace with his senior teammate.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen later challenged Vettel but had to settle for fourth, ahead of the strategically-disadvantaged Leclerc.

Pierre Gasly got the bonus point for the fastest lap of the race in the other Honda-powered Red Bull on the penultimate lap, having taken a new set of soft tyres specifically for the purpose.

Gasly’s lap was 1.15 seconds better than Hamilton’s best – and almost four seconds better than Ricciardo’s.

Thai rookie Alex Albon was adjudged driver of the day, scoring a point with 10th place after starting from the pitlane because of a practice crash in his Honda-powered Toro Rosso that forced him to miss qualifying.

The 1000th world championship GP was generally a dreary affair and poor advertisement for what is meant to be the world’s premier form of motorsport.

Ricciardo was a lap down at the chequered flag, evidence of how far Renault still is away from the big three teams.

But the carsales.com.au global ambassador had kept the rest of the midfield behind him and felt that seventh was “a strong result … the best we can ask for [at this stage]”.

Ricciardo outqualified teammate Nico Hulkenberg for the first time – they started seventh and eighth on the fourth row of the grid – and headed him in the race, the German only completing 14 of the 56 laps because what seems to have been a software problem in his power unit’s energy recovery system.

Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul said Ricciardo “drove an intelligent race to conserve the tyres on a one-stop strategy, which we had to adopt to maintain position despite the challenge of starting on the soft tyres”.

Ricciardo said it was “good to get on the board, finish the race and have my first points with the team”.

He’s now equal 10th in the drivers’ championship on six points with Hulkenberg, who was seventh in the season-opener in Melbourne. Renault is fourth in the constructors’ championship, equal with Ferrari-powered Alfa Romeo Sauber, but a long way behind Mercedes (130 points), Ferrari (73) and Red Bull (52).

“We’ll take the positives from that [Shanghai race],” Ricciardo said.

“It might have looked a simple seventh, but it wasn’t easy.

“It was a bit of a lonely race. I didn’t have so many battles, but I was being pushed hard from the cars behind all the way to the end.

“It’s a strong result and the best we can ask for, at least for today.

“We want to push on from this over the next couple of races [in Baku, Azerbaijan, on April 28, and then the first European GP in Barcelona on May 12] and keep working from here.”

Hamilton has taken the lead in the drivers’ championship from Bottas, 68 points to 62, with Verstappen on 39, Vettel 37 and Leclerc 36.

Ferrari has publicly promised to be even-handed in its team orders to its drivers, but that won’t be enough to placate the Italian media tiring of Vettel and in love with the scuderia’s recruit.

“I understand the feeling of Charles,” new Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said.

“We simply tried to give Sebastian a go to see if he could keep the pace of Mercedes.

“Charles is right to be upset. It’s a shame for him and next time maybe it will be to his advantage.”

Jaguar has scored its first victory as a factory team since 1991, with New Zealander Mitch Evans winning Saturday’s Formula E electric open-wheeler series round on the streets of Rome.

Evans, 24, a protégé of Australia’s ex-F1 racer Mark Webber, overtook and then held off German former Jaguar junior driver Andre Lotterer, driving for Chinese team DS Techeetah.

Jaguar entered Formula E in October 2016 and had been struggling before the victory that Evans said “feels beautiful”.

“This has really come at a great time,” he said.

The next round of the fifth season of Formula E, with teams now fielding Generation 2 machinery with batteries that last the distance rather than having to make mid-race car swaps, is in Paris on April 27.

Australia’s Will Power was only seventh in today’s IndyCar race at Long Beach, California, as his Penske teammate Josef Newgarden remained in the series lead.

Andretti Autosport’s Alex Rossi beat fellow American Newgarden by more than 20 seconds, with Graham Rahal, Scott Dixon, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Penske’s third driver, Simon Pagenaud, all ahead of Power.

The series now moves on next month to Indianapolis, where Power won both the road course grand prix and the Indy 500 at The Brickyard last year.