Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo finished a superb fourth for Red Bull at the season-opening race in Melbourne.
The home fans’ hero showed strong pace throughout the race and capitalised on a good team strategy to get in front of both the Toro Rosso drivers at the first stop and also gained time from the red flag and Kimi Raikkonen’s retirement.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race, Ricciardo was delighted to claim fourth at this home race: “Yeah, I’m really happy, towards the end of the [middle] stint we were in the top three and I had the fairy tale in my mind of being on the podium here. Genuinely [though] I’m happy, fourth is great but I’m probably more happy with the pace we had. At times, we were not that far off the pace Mercedes and Ferrari had.”
Ricciardo was also asked about his prospects for the upcoming races, to which he responded: “I think we can definitely aim for more top fives until we get this [power unit] update [around Montreal]. Tyre management was good [and] we seem to be pretty kind on tyres.”
The Red Bull team opted to fit super-soft tyres at his final stop with just over a dozen laps remaining. As a result, Ricciardo was able to set the fastest lap of the race albeit on low fuel and on much fresher and softer tyres than both the Mercedes drivers and Vettel’s Ferrari. In contrast, there will be some slight concerns at the Red Bull team as Ricciardo’s teammate Daniil Kvyat was forced out of the race at the end of the formation lap when his car ground to a halt approaching the grid.
