MOTORSPORT: Cheap bit shafts Ricciardo's Jerez test

A cheap faulty part in Renault's revised Formula One power unit is restricting Daniel Ricciardo's testing for the new season now little more than five weeks away.

Red Bull Racing (RBR) and Renault knew before they arrived at the first pre-season test at Jerez in Spain that they had a problem with a metallic shaft linked to the water pump in the energy recovery system (ERS) of their power unit.

They have been aggressively trying to improve that unit to narrow the dominance Mercedes had in the first year of the hybrid cars and stay ahead of Ferrari and McLaren, now with Honda power again.

While Ferrari's pace has been good at Jerez and Mercedes has done incredible mileage, Ricciardo's track time was limited on the first day and again on day three. His new teammate, 20-year-old Russian Daniil Kyvat, damaged the front wing mounts on the RB11 car early on the second day and, without replacement parts at this early stage of development, could not test at serious speed after that.

The McLaren-Honda MP4-30 finally ran with some reliability on the third day but then rain denied the team's superstar recruit Fernando Alonso any shot at a quick time.

Sauber's new Brazilian pay driver recruit Felipe Nasr was fastest for the day, on soft tyres and low fuel – a reminder that pre-season testing can be a poor form guide.

RBR, Renault and Ricciardo are confident their metallic shaft problem, which emerged on a dynamometer last week, will be solved for the second four-day test in Barcelona, starting on February 19.

"It is crazy that such a cheap part is causing so many issues for a car so expensive like a Renault-Red Bull package," Renault Sport F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul admitted.

"It is something that is not critical to performance but can be critical to reliability, so we know what we have to do."

Ricciardo, the 25-year-old West Australian who won the only three GPs last season in which Mercedes was not the victor, remains upbeat about the RB11 and his prospects for this year, although RBR's now part-time technical genius Adrian Newey doubts the gap to the German team can be closed quickly.

"I think we're where we thought we would be [at the Jerez test, which ends tonight, Australian time]," Ricciardo said.

"We know there are still some steps for the [two] Barcelona tests. We know there's stuff still to come.

"We didn't expect to have everything on the track this week. Come the next two tests we want to be racking up more laps - and I think we will.

"We came into this test knowing it was a pretty big evolution from last year and we knew it would be tight.

"Obviously we'd love to do 150 laps here [Mercedes is averaging 133 a day], but we knew it would be compromised one way or another.

"I think if Dany [Kvyat] can rack up 50 laps [Wednesday night, Australian time] that's not a bad test for us."

Certainly the problems are much less than Red Bull-Renault had at the start of the hybrid era a year ago.

"There are a lot of positives," Ricciardo said.

Abiteboul said Renault would review and optimise the design of the metallic shaft.

"It is something that was working very well last year, but we decided to change and improve it a bit further with the overall packaging of the engine," Abiteboul said.

"Usually you have very specific simulations, designs tests, and validation protocol, but honestly we did not do it for this part because it is such a stupid [small, cheap] part."

Ferrari was fastest on the first two days at Jerez with Sebastian Vettel, the four-time world champion it lured from RBR, in its SF15-T car, while teammate Kimi Raikkonen was second to Nasr in the Ferrari-engined Sauber on day three.

Mercedes' Nico Rosberg, runner-up to teammate Lewis Hamilton in last year's championship, and Ricciardo have been impressed by Ferrari's pace after the Italian team's first winless season for two decades.

McLaren was happy to start chalking up laps after two days of little running with its new Honda power unit.

"The car is running 10 laps in a row, so we have no design, concept or architecture issues with the car," McLaren team principal Eric Boullier said.

"Fernando said the car is really reacting well and really stable."

The Force India team has missed this first test and may run last year's model at the next in Barcelona so that it can try Pirelli's latest tyre compounds, leaving it only the final four-day test at the same venue to trial its VJM08 model.

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley vowed there was no chance the outfit would miss the season-opening GP in Melbourne in mid-March after the demise of the Caterham and Marussia teams already.

"We will be in Melbourne ... there's no doubt about that," Fernley said.

"Yes, testing time with the new car will be limited, but we are doing everything possible to make sure we arrive in Australia in reasonable shape and with as many miles on the car as possible."