Daniel Ricciardo says Red Bull has been adopting a “safe” approach with regards to reliability, and is sure the team can be “very close” to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari, despite its relative lack of running.
Ricciardo completed 70 laps during testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Wednesday, compared to the 139 amassed by Sebastian Vettel, and the combined total of 170 for Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton, who shared duties for Mercedes.
The pattern follows on from Red Bull completing fewer laps than both Ferrari and Mercedes across the opening two days of running.
Ricciardo was also hindered by an exhaust issue, which restricted his running in the afternoon, as he placed third, behind Bottas and Vettel.
“They found a problem with the exhaust so they had to take it apart to check everything was okay and that took some time,” he said.
“Obviously with [Max] Verstappen running tomorrow, we don’t have a whole lot of parts here so have to be safe with these checks.”
“So we lost a bit of time there but before that we had a pretty good run, long-ish run, nearly 20 laps, it’s important for us to understand the tyres, it’s still a Pirelli but being a wider tyre it does behave differently so I think we understood how it works a bit better today so that was important for us.”
Ricciardo also downplayed his lap time deficit compared to Red Bull’s primary opponents.
“I think for now we haven’t really got too involved with the performance runs,” he commented.
“We’re trying to get some laps, some consistent laps, for reliability as well to make sure nothing’s getting too hot.
“The lap times now [are] not too representative; I think we can expect Mercedes and Ferrari to be at the front but I think we can be very close as well.”
