Daniel Ricciardo believes the pace he had in the second half of Sunday’s Australian GP was proof Red Bull had potentially “the quickest car” in the race at Albert Park.
The local favourite saw his chances of a strong result at his home Grand Prix hampered by a three-place grid penalty, harshly awarded for an incident in practice, on Sunday though it would be the Haas cars causing the most disruption as he and teammate Max Verstappen both found themselves stuck behind them.
Their remarkable downfall during the pit-stops though, with Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean leaving with loose wheels, would benefit Ricciardo greatly, moving him up to fourth and allowing him to push Kimi Raikkonen for the podium place.
“I obviously tried to do all I could with Kimi,” he told Sky Sports afterwards. “It’s a tight track, it is tricky to overtake but we set the fastest lap and that’s really good signs for things to come in the next few weeks.
“I think we’re really close to Ferrari’s pace.”
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As for Verstappen, the Dutchman endured a difficult afternoon in Melbourne as the handling of his RB14 was mysteriously and drastically different to how it had been in qualifying.
“I had a lot of issues with the car, balance problems, we found out after four or five laps something broke off the car,” he said revealing the cause.
“All the time in the middle of the corner was losing a lot of grip and at one point I got caught out at Turn 1 and spun.
“It’s not ideal but luckily with the 360, I didn’t lose too many positions. After that you are in the hunt but you can’t overtake on this track so it’s a bit of a shame.
“With the circumstances we were in, the damage we had, we still scored some points.”