Red Bull’s problems continued on the first day of the final pre-season test in Bahrain, and whilst Daniel Ricciardo was pleased to get some running in the morning, he admitted there is a long way to go.
The Australian completed the majority of his 36 laps during the morning, but problems in the afternoon left the RB10 garage-bound for much of the four hours.
“This morning it looked pretty good but performance-wise we really don’t know,” he told the official F1 website. “The lap times are still spread out, but that also comes from different tyres, different fuel loads, so it has no real significance. For us we still have to learn a bit more before we do any performance runs.”
Whilst overheating seems to be an obvious issue, Ricciardo says it’s a matter of lots of small problems which are impacting on one another.
“There is not really a main problem,” he added. “We fix one problem and another arises, but as they all feed into each other, if one thing doesn’t work it impacts on to the next. But we’re getting there. Sure, there are still many boxes to tick.”
He dismissed claims they could be classed as a back-marker in the early races, claiming that testing is exactly that and no real pecking order has emerged yet.
“It’s just testing so there is no such thing as back-marker and front-runner,” he said. “Mercedes is probably the team that is consistently at the front right now, but the rest is pretty unknown.
“We need to focus on ourselves and do more mileage. And what we’ve done today was the most positive stuff that we have done so far. Sure, it’s still not enough laps, but at least it’s looking like we are getting into the right direction.”
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