Ricciardo: Renault has to figure out wrong strategy call

Daniel Ricciardo says Renault needs to sit down and uncover why it made a major strategic error which cost it points at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Ricciardo was running in fifth place early on, having made his way past Kevin Magnussen on the opening lap. 

However, when a safety car was deployed following debris laid down by Charles Leclerc's Ferrari, both Renault's pitted for fresh tyres, which put them into traffic.

When all the pit stops had been made, Ricciardo found himself running in P10, going on to pick up his second points score of the season. But the Australian questioned the strategy, saying his result could have been a lot higher. 

"We have to figure it out, I got caught at Rascasse, as soon as they said 'box', I had no time to react differently," Ricciardo said. "Obviously, it wasn't the right call.

"I'll settle and we'll sort it out as a team what we could have done better. For now, we have to have a look, see what they saw at the time and why they brought us in. 

"We both came in and handed everyone else the positions. It's a shame because we had a great start, Kevin was our target. We had a good Turn 1 and got into fifth, that was really our place. We could have had a really good result today."

Hulkenberg received a puncture after Leclerc overtake 

Nico Hulkenberg shared his teammate's frustration, as he too lost out on a strong result following an early pot stop.

Hulkenberg was running further down the order, and revealed that he suffered a puncture when Charles Leclerc squeezed his way past him into Rascasse. 

"It's frustrating, especially because the car and the package is much better than what the results suggest," he said. "It's very bitter to take that.

"It's happened a few weekends now. Today, when Charles hit me, I carried a puncture from that and it just kicked off a sequence of bad incidents.

"Once you are behind on this track, it is very difficult to recover. In my race, everything went against us. It's disappointing, frustrating, but we need to keep fighting and I think our fortunes change."

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