Red Bull has made an early start on development of the RB14 in an effort to overcome the sluggish initial performance at the beginning of seasons, Daniel Ricciardo has revealed.
The Milton Keynes outfit has a reputation for struggling in the early races each year having only won the opening round once in 2011. Instead, they come on strong at the end of the year, as has been the case in 2017 with at least one driver on the podium at every race since Belgium.
The surprising performance they faced to Mercedes and Ferrari has also continually shrunk with Max Verstappen winning on pure pace in Malaysia, beating Lewis Hamilton in a head-to-head.
But these slow builds are considered detrimental to their championship hopes and that is something Ricciardo wants addressing for 2018.
“I always feel like our starts to the season have been slow, particularly since I’ve been with the team, but as far as I’m aware that’s not planned. I don’t know why exactly,” the Australian said.
“We definitely get stronger and it’s a nice trend to get better and better but we’d like to start better. I still don’t really know the answer why that is. We always feel like we start on the next year’s car early enough but maybe what we think is early isn’t early enough.
“I know for next year it has been brought forward more than it was for this year,” Ricciardo added.
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With the rapid development of the chassis over the course of 2017, further work over the winter could be all Red Bull needs to make it a three-team duel for the title next season, something that is deemed essential if the team wants to retain their current drivers.
For the 28-year-old from Perth, there is also extra incentive to want a race-winning car right from the start as the season-opener is also his home Grand Prix.
“It’s never the intention not to be on the podium in Melbourne, it’s probably more my intention than any other race,” he claimed.
