Daniel Ricciardo believes Red Bull has the pace to make it a three-way fight in this Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, following a promising couple of practice sessions.
Ricciardo ended FP2 in second place on the timesheets, just under half a second adrift of pacesetter Sebastian Vettel and nearly six tenths faster than the leading Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton.
“It’s weird,” Ricciardo said when asked about Mercedes’ lack of pace.
“Obviously this morning they looked strong, particularly Lewis, and then this afternoon it kinda looked like they put more fuel in the car or something.
“We’ll see. If that’s genuine then it reminds me a little bit of Singapore in 2015.
“If that’s the case, beauty, but I expect them to be OK. If we all get it together on Saturday it should be a three-way fight.
“There’s a few little things that I definitely want to work on, but generally we are in that window where we need to be and not a second off or anything, so that’s promising.”
Max Verstappen was three-tenths shy of his team-mate’s fastest time in second practice, labelling FP2 as ‘messy’.
“We can be quite pleased with the performance we had so far,” he said.
“Just in the second practice it was a bit messy with the going out on the second set, and then the red flag came out on my lap.
“I think in general if you take all the sectors together, it’s alright.
“You don’t need to be the quickest on Thursday, that’s what I learned. It was positive but we still need to improve.”
