MOTORSPORT: Giant Ricciardo rev-up for 2015

Daniel Ricciardo launches next year's Formula One season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne today amid mounting hopes he can win it.

Three victories this year with Red Bull Racing in his breakout season, and the way he outgunned a four-time world champion teammate, Sebastian Vettel, is evidence Ricciardo  has the ability to triumph in his home race – something Mark Webber never did.

But winning at Melbourne's Albert Park circuit on March 15 will be about more than the 25-year-old West Australian's talent.

It is the other side of the coin – the mechanical side – that is the cause for caution as the expectations grow that Ricciardo not only will win in Melbourne but become world champion next year.

The boss of his Red Bull Racing team, Christian Horner, has flagged his concerns that its Renault power unit may be at a bigger disadvantage next season to its dominant Mercedes rival than it was this year.

And Adrian Newey, the creator of more world-title-winning cars than any other engineer in F1 history, including those in which Vettel won four consecutive championships from 2010 to 2013, is heading into retirement.

Ricciardo has already been in Melbourne for two days ahead of today's launch at the city's Federation Square and Flinders Street railway station.

He has been his always cheerful self, feeding the aspirations of what is now an army of fans that he can go one better than his runner-up position at Albert Park last March – a podium position ultimately taken off him for a fuel-flow irregularity.

That shock second-place finish to the factory Mercedes of Nico Rosberg came after Red Bull's RB10 car had been hopelessly uncompetitive in European pre-season testing.

It was testament to Newey's genius that the RB10 suddenly became so competitive once the racing season began and that, in the year that Mercedes won a record 16 GPs, it became a triple race winner.

However, Newey – the man whose brilliance with aerodynamics has had some in the F1 paddock believing he can see air – won't be around next season.

He is disenchanted with the rules that have come with the new era of hybrid power.

Newey will be a huge loss to RBR – and the sport.

Equally troubling though is Horner's declaration that Mercedes could be even further ahead of its rivals next season.

Attempts to relax the "freeze" on engine development during the season imposed by the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) have failed, largely snookered by Mercedes' reluctance to give its rivals an even break.

And it is for this reason that Horner has said he is not expecting RBR to overhaul Mercedes next season.

"We are not writing off next year but, for sure, there is a gap there," Horner has told Britain's Autosport.

"And, from what we hear, the performance gains that Mercedes are bringing next year, it is going to be a massive challenge to reduce that.

"Renault can make an inroad, but I think it would be unlikely to match this year's [Mercedes] engine.

"I think we can get closer to it, but Mercedes are not going to stand still – and Ferrari are in a similar situation [to Renault].

"It is very tough when the engines are frozen at the end of February."

RBR, with Newey at the technical helm, did an amazing job this year to finish runner-up to Mercedes in the constructors' world championship and to finish ahead of three other teams using Mercedes power – the rejuvenated Williams, McLaren and Force India.

Next season Honda returns to F1 as the engine supplier to McLaren, with which it dominated the sport in the days of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, while Lotus is switching from Renault to Mercedes power.

Horner turned up the heat on Renault early in the 2014 season when the extent of the performance difference between its motor and that of Mercedes became clear, and the French company has pledged to do better.

But the concern within F1 is that improvements to Mercedes' energy recovery systems and the exhaust areas of its cars will put it even further ahead of Red Bull-Renault and Ferrari.

The word in F1 circles is perhaps another 70-horsepower better.

Honda is the great unknown, but its initial track testing was woeful – one of this year's McLaren cars modified to accept the Honda power unit could do only five laps in two days at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina circuit the week after the season ended.

Horner is bothered by the speculation that the Mercedes will be much better than this year's W05 model in which Lewis Hamilton and Rosberg were first and second in the championship.

"If you believe the numbers that are floating around, the gap could actually grow rather than diminish," Horner said.

"That would be rather depressing if that was the case."

And a huge dampener on Ricciardo's chances of winning in Melbourne in mid-March ... just for starters.