F1 Raceweek: Ricciardo could make history – Australian GP in numbers

Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo admits his rivalry with team-mate Max Verstappen is helping the team improve their auto.

Hamilton and Rosberg’s replacement, Valtteri Bottas, were outshone in pre-season testing by Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, but Mercedes remain favourites to win a fourth straight title. I think everyone else is.

“But make no mistake, it’s still possible”.

“But if Max beats me every race I am going to run out of excuses, so certainly your teammate is the number one person you want to beat”.

“We’ve been on six dinners this week”, Ricciardo said.

DANIEL Ricciardo is a nice guy but he doesn’t want that to define him.

“I’m a big admirer of his”. It looks as if Massa will be there as a babysitter for 18 year old teammate Lance Stroll, who is in the team mainly due to an injection of cash to the team; $80 million.

But he’s cautiously optimistic the Silver Arrows’ grip will be loosened this season.

Ricciardo finished third in last season’s driver’s championship but may be settling for less this year if testing pace becomes race pace.

Although Ricciardo didn’t get to keep the second-place finish from his debut with Red Bull, that didn’t diminish his performance. If that improves – which I think it will – they could be serious competitors.

With Ferrari having queried over the winter the legality of the kind of trick suspension systems run by Red Bull and Mercedes, Red Bull wrote to the FIA more recently to check about teams burning oil as fuel.

“I don’t think we need another team winning everything”.

The changes include increasing vehicle body width, and tyre width, to produce more downforce and speed.

After posting the fastest lap time there in 2016, Ricciardo could threaten Michael Schumacher’s 2004 Albert Park lap record.

“There’s always a risk with change. you assume it’s going to be better but you can’t guarantee it”, he said. There is still a lot of opportunity to improve the vehicle.

And the famous Italian team, who failed to register a single victory previous year and are without a drivers’ champion in more than a decade, will head into the new campaign cautiously optimistic.

The newly developed F1 cars have tires which are 25 percent wider, have more grip and _ crucially _ are more durable, enabling drivers to push harder and limiting the cyclical pit stop strategy that made many races easy to call.