With the COVID-19 emergency, the 2020 Formula 1 season was a period from which you can only grasp the emotions experienced during the race weekends precisely because all the participating teams had difficulties in restarting.

Renault, among them, took fifth place in the Constructors' Standings after scoring three podiums towards the second half of the Championship. The beginning, on the other hand, is to be forgotten as the Barcelona Grand Prix where neither of the two drivers of the French team managed to reach the points.

Reflecting on the sudden change that the team had in the second half of the season, Renault chassis technical director Pat Fry said that just looking back at that Grand Prix, the team managed to recover.

"Barcelona was, I think up until Turkey, our worst race of the season,

"But while it was a bad weekend for us, when we actually went through and looked at it, and tried to understand it from analysing that poor performance, you actually end up working out what you need to do.

"So yes it was disappointing, but I think we learned a lot from that on how we should optimise the package we've got.

"By Spa, and I think that medium downforce level is classically a level that Renault works well at with, that knowledge we have in the setup and a few developments that have been coming through, meant it was quite reasonable for us" Fry concluded.

And it was precisely the turning point of the set-up that Renault brought to the second race at Silverstone that Daniel Ricciardo highlighted for the entire 2020 Formula 1 season.

In fact, the set-up used at Silverstone in Friday's free practice gave Ricciardo the opportunity to feel at ease and in turn to advance the team by making him obtain further results.

Despite this, Fry stated that the season was focused on increasing momentum by putting the progress achieved "in the background".

Returning to the speech Ricciardo made regarding the set-up, Pat Fry declared: "I'm clearly not going to tell you exactly what it was, but I think our understanding has been improving on how to set the car up.

"I was surprised by the size of his comments to be completely honest. It was clearly enough to get his attention, but I think there was still quite a lot more of performance we needed to find.

"It's like all these things: the devil's in the detail, isn't it? But it certainly helped our qualifying at the second Silverstone.

"I think it was the first time we were looking reasonably strong in qualifying, although the race was a little bit more of a challenge."

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