Vettel, meanwhile, says he “felt a bit more in charge of the car"
Friday 19 September 2014 11:05, UK
Daniel Ricciardo is hopeful Red Bull will be able to “sneak into the top five” on the Italian GP grid as they aim to take the fight to the Mercedes-powered cars and Ferrari on Sunday.
Having profited from Mercedes mistakes and incidents to win the last two grands prix either side of the summer break, Ricciardo has arrived at Monza as a dark horse in the hitherto Rosberg/Hamilton-dominated title race. However, with the famous circuit predominantly made up of high-speed straights, Red Bull’s Renault-powered RB10 has been expected to be exposed – although that same scenario was also forecast for Spa, where Ricciardo won.
Sebastian Vettel was the team’s lead runner throughout Friday, finishing just outside the top five in both sessions, while Ricciardo was delayed by an engine glitch in P1 and then finished tenth in P2.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Ricciardo said Red Bull would aim to get within 0.4s of Mercedes in qualifying – they trailed by half a second on Friday – and then look to close up again over the longer distance.
“We didn't get much running this morning due to an engine issue, but it was okay and we recovered well in the afternoon,” the in-form Australian driver said.
“The track's always fun here, for a track with so few corners it's very challenging and with the low downforce braking it’s very difficult.
“Obviously we want to be a bit further up, but I think we can chip away at it tomorrow, the Mercedes will be quick, but if we can sneak into the top five in qualifying then we'll have a good crack at the race. Getting temperature into the tyres is tricky, especially for the first timed lap.”
Having borne the brunt of Red Bull’s reliability trouble in 2014, two-time Monza victor Vettel was relieved to enjoy a trouble-free Friday and claimed afterwards that he “felt a bit more in charge of the car today”.
“It was a good day for us, we didn’t have any problems and were able to do a lot of laps and test some things. It’s important to get Friday right in order to be able to build on that for the rest of the weekend,” the World Champion reflected.
“The tyres mean it should be a one-stop race on Sunday, but we will see. I think some struggled to get them to work; there’s not so much different between the medium and hard tyres here. I think tomorrow should be better, as it should be warmer and the track will start rubbering in a bit. I felt a bit more in charge of the car today.”
Although it has been Ricciardo who has continued to deliver the big race-day results for Red Bull, it has been Vettel who has again proved the team’s lead qualifying runner recently – the German outpacing his team-mate on Saturdays three times in the last five attempts.
Ricciardo trailed the sister car by two tenths in the low-fuel Friday runs and said: “Today Seb was a bit quicker so a bit for me to try and learn tonight, but I’m confident that come qualy we can be back [with him].”
