Ocon and Ricciardo not expecting inner-team rifts at Renault

Esteban Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo are determined to avoid tripping over each other at Renault as the pairing heads into its first season together at the French outfit.

Ocon comes back to F1 after a year on the sidelines and with the ambition of picking up where he left off at the end of 2018, when he was one of the sport's most promising talents and a top midfield contender with Force India.

Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul recently admitted that managing the outfit's new tandem would not be an easy task. Indeed, there are those in the paddock who are expecting fireworks sooner rather than later between the Aussie and the Frenchman.

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But Ocon knows all about how an inner team rivalry can spiral out of control and weigh on undermine a team's results, having experienced such messy disturbances alongside Sergio Perez at Force India.

And that troubled period still resonates with the 23-year-old.

"What happened at Force India is not something I want to redo again," he said.

"It was not a nice atmosphere. We had respect - me and Checo - and it didn’t slow down the team or anything but the atmosphere between us was not so good.

"On track we came close too many times, that was clear, and that was not good. It’s not something I want to do again."

So far, Ricciardo and Ocon look like they're off to a good start following their initial period of getting acquainted.

"The atmosphere is definitely a lot better between me and Daniel than it was with Checo," added Ocon.

"So if we can keep working like that, even though it’s going to be different on track, it’s going to be a lot better for everyone to have a positive energy and a great working environment.

"Hopefully we’re going to be solid on that topic and be able to push the team forward. But no, we don’t want to have that happening.

"Of course it can always happen at the start or something, but in a race like it happened it was not acceptable."

Ricciardo, a seven-time Grand Prix winner who'll be heading into his tenth season of F1, insists he's starting from a clean slate with his new teammate, and with an open mind.

"I'm definitely coming into it with a fresh approach and I don't want to lay any rules down from day one, because I think already that will create a tension in itself," he said.

"His relationship with Perez, obviously they came to blows a few times, and it's a little bit like when I joined Red Bull, you know Mark [Webber] and [Sebastian] Vettel came to blows a few times so a lot of people were like, are you going to have blows from Vettel?

"But the way I saw it was: ‘Mark and Vettel have their own relationship. That's not my relationship so I need to establish something with him. It's a bit like Perez and Ocon and me and Ocon.

"Maybe he had his things in the past, even with Max [Verstappen, when they collided in Brazil], but I need to create something for myself with him. So I'm not going to come in with any kind of ideas or hesitations.

"I’m prepared for competition, but I'm not prepared for fun and games. If down the track fun and games appear then I'll deal with it at the time, but I think I'm certainly coming in with an open mind and positivity, as opposed to, ‘oh ****, when's he going to blow up?’ I'm not I'm not thinking like that.”

"I have every intention of building something positive," he added.

"On Sundays we're going to race it out and maybe we'll bang wheels at some point, but it's I think our best intention to try to get this team in a good place before they start losing energy focused on managing us you know they need to manage a better race car."

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