F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Horner: Monaco pole was down to Renault

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Daniel Ricciardo would not have been on pole position in Monaco without Renault's power unit upgrade.

Renault fast-tracked its B-spec power unit to be ready for the Monaco Grand Prix, with Red Bull and the works team each receiving one version of the update. Ricciardo was running the upgrade and took pole position on Saturday, with Horner keen to praise the importance of the new engine during the weekend.

"I think Renault has done a good job and, obviously, the gains that have come in the power unit this weekend have been approximately 0.2secs," Horner said. "So that will translate to a bit more when we get to circuits like Montreal and Azerbaijan, so it’s been a positive step and, without it, we wouldn’t have achieved the pole position."

And Horner was also impressed by Renault's ability to successfully deliver the new power unit a race early, even if it was only available for one car.

"It was always going to be clear, even before Max [Verstappen] joined the team, that, if it was going to be available [Ricciardo would receive it] – and we pushed Renault really hard from the beginning of the year to get it for this race, so hats off to them for achieving it because it was scheduled for Montreal…"

On Sunday morning Red Bull and Renault announced a two-year extension of their power unit partnership, with Toro Rosso also to be supplied by Renault during that time having switched to Ferrari this year.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.