After qualifying third for the German Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo is cautiously optimistic that he can take the fight to Mercedes during Sunday's race.
Ricciardo's best was 0.363 seconds off the Mercedes pace and with his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen alongside him on the second row for the start, he believes it's possible they could give the German team something to think about.
"[We've got a] a lock-out with the second row and hopefully we can do something with it," he said.
The relatively small margin to the Mercedes cars in the final part of qualifying increased Ricciardo's optimism.
"I felt that, on low fuel yesterday, Mercedes had a pretty good buffer over everyone and the long run pace we looked to be closer than that, so that was giving us a bit of optimism coming into Sunday. Obviously today we’ve got a bit closer on one-lap pace than we were yesterday so let's see. Hopefully it translates into something tomorrow.
"Even to put a little bit of pressure on them at some point in the race would be nice.
"Obviously tomorrow, you never know what can happen, and racetracks change day to day with the temperature and whatever but yeah, obviously we’re looking pretty good."
Ricciardo added that he has plenty of tyres, and resultant strategy options, available for tomorrow's race, in which it is thought teams will have to decide between two and three stops.
"Yeah, from what I understand, we've got different tyres available for the race" said the Australian, "so there could be some different strategies amongst the first few cars. Hopefully it works out. If it does, the fans might have a race on their hands."
