Daniel Ricciardo has expressed confidence that Red Bull is “close” to Mercedes in terms of outright performance off the back of an encouraging day of testing in Spain.
Ricciardo used the Hypersoft tyres to set a new track record at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, posting a time of 1:18.047, as he amassed 165 laps in the RB14.
Ricciardo’s best lap left him 0.353s clear of reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton, as only Mercedes and Renault completed more laps than Red Bull on Wednesday.
“I think that, looking at it now, we are close,” said Ricciardo.
“I still don’t know where Ferrari are, I’m quite confident Mercedes is probably just in front of us but Ferrari I’m not sure.
“But I think we’re going to be much closer than last year.
“It looks pretty positive for now. Reliability is pretty solid, we had planned for 160/170 laps at the start of the day and I was like, “that’s optimistic”, but we did it.
“Reliability is solid and the car is coming along.
When it was put to Ricciardo that his odds for wnning the title currently rest at 10-1, he joked: “I’m not personally a betting man but a lot of my mates are so, if they are listening, throw a cheeky 75k on it!”
Ricciardo accepted that Red Bull still has weaknesses but reckons the inherent strengths of the car are “a bit stronger” than its predecessor.
“We’ve still got some weaknesses, but I think our strengths are good, so we just now work on a few of the weaknesses,” he said.
“Similar to last year, I feel the car, but I feel the strengths are a bit stronger, so that is good. That is where we are a bit closer than we were 12 months ago.
“We will still try and fine tune a few things, but anyway it is not bad. So a positive day for me.”
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