Max Verstappen was encouraged by Red Bull’s race pace at the Australian Grand Prix as he finished fifth, while a miserable weekend for Daniel Ricciardo came to an early end.
Verstappen ultimately picked up ten points as he held station throughout the race, pressurising Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the closing stages.
Nonetheless, the Dutchman finished around 30 seconds thirty adrift of race winner Sebastian Vettel, a disappointing result for a team who had been touted as potential title-winners over the winter.
Verstappen, though, feels his performance in Melbourne was cause for optimism and is confident the team will gain ground in the coming races.
“I was still a bit surprised I was that close to Kimi,” he said. “[My] pace was quite good compared to him, and behind me there was not much pressure.
“The car behaved quite a bit better in the race than qualifying. We still need to improve, and we will, so we’ll see in the next few races.”
For team-mate Ricciardo, there were few positives. The Aussie was set to start 15th, demoted five places after being forced to change his gearbox following a qualifying shunt, but his weekend swiftly went from bad to worse.
The home favourite hit trouble on his reconnaissance lap, towed back to the pits after suffering a gearbox sensor failure which confined him to sixth gear.
The Red Bull mechanics then faced a race against time to solve the problem and though Ricciardo entered the fray after two laps, he ultimately retired with a suspected fuel pressure issue.
“On the plus side, I’m getting out of here – it’s been a long week,” he said. “It’s been fun, but I feel bad for everyone, bad for the fans obviously – there’s more people here supporting me than the others.
“It just kinda snowballed from yesterday. The five [place] grid penalty sounded bad enough but we had other issues.
“We were laps down, but getting some information – it was valuable track time.
“At the end we believe it was something to do with fuel pressure – basically it just switched off. It was just instant, there was no procedure I could do to stay out there.
“I’m happy to move on. I’m disappointed today, but I’ll be ready tomorrow to go for China.”
