Red Bull driver will take a grid drop if he uses another engine in 2015
Tuesday 12 May 2015 13:59, UK
Daniel Ricciardo is imploring his Renault engine to last through the remainder of the Spanish GP weekend and Monaco in two weeks to avoid a grid penalty in the principality.
The unreliability which has plagued Red Bull’s season continued in Barcelona as the team were forced to change the Australian’s used engine after Friday’s opening practice session, meaning Ricciardo missed most of Practice Two.
It means the Australian is now onto his fourth engine of the season – the last permitted without penalty under the 2015 regulations.
“It is better to have it here than say Monaco where you definitely need the laps there,” Ricciardo told Sky Sports News HQ in reference to the fact that the famous circuit is infamously unfriendly for overtaking.
“Hopefully it is our worst Friday for a while and we don’t see too many more of these. But we are on the fourth engine now and just trying to make it survive as long as we can – at least until Monaco, we certainly don’t want to serve the penalty there.”
With just a handful of laps to his name, Ricciardo is now hoping he can salvage his weekend with a decent result in qualifying, but admits he will be forced to use team-mate Daniil Kvyat’s data.
“Tomorrow is what counts, so just make sure we are prepared for qualifying and the race,” he said.
“Not much we can take from today, I think we are going to look car 26 and see what they did and we can learn more from them than we did. Tomorrow is what counts and if we get it right it’s not so bad overall.”
While Ricciardo toiled, it was a positive day for under-pressure Kvyat who finished top of the battle behind Mercedes and Ferrari with fifth place in Practice Rwo.
“We had a reasonable P2, we did our programme and got a lot of data so overnight we have plenty of things to look at, so we will try to extract the maximum tomorrow,” the Russian said.
“I guess it was quite a good Friday."
