MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo counts on aero gains

Formula One starts its European "season" this weekend with Daniel Ricciardo not anticipating any better performance from Renault's disappointing power unit at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Australia's F1 racer is hoping aerodynamic changes to his Red Bull RB11 will help him compete with the Mercedes-powered Williams cars and perhaps the Ferraris, although not the Mercedes factory cars of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

However, Red Bull Racing's head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows has made the bold prediction that the team can catch Mercedes solely through aero improvements, but even if that is to happen it's unlikely to be immediately.

Spain is the first opportunity in the world championship for the European-based teams to introduce major upgrades after the "long-haul" races in Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain, with Red Bull – which won four straight constructor and driver titles (the latter with Sebastian Vettel) in 2010-2013 – having a lot of ground to make up.

The 25-year-old Ricciardo, Red Bull's team leader since German Vettel's switch to Ferrari, has had only two sixth places, a ninth and a 10th this season after winning three GPs in his breakout season last year.

He will use his fourth engine of the season this weekend and, until a change – next Thursday at the earliest – in the limit on the number of power units to five, could incur a 10-place grid penalty if anything goes amiss with this one in a hurry.

Ricciardo said overnight that Renault was concentrating solely on the reliability of its power unit for now rather than performance.

"For now the performance side is not going full steam ahead because of the reliability issues," he said.

"The main stuff we are trying to resolve this weekend is reliability.

"Obviously with the fourth engine we want to try and get this as far as it will go.

"That extra half a tenth [of a second] of performance, I think we're just going to put that aside until we are 100 per cent sure with what's happening with reliability."

Ricciardo's third engine blew in a plume of smoke at the finish of the Bahrain GP three weeks ago and he will nurse the fourth in Spain, at least throughout practice.

"There was definitely some understanding taken from Bahrain, so steps have been made to not let that happen again," Ricciardo said.

"They [Renault] are confident they have pushed the mileage quite a long way further, so reliability-wise it looks like there have been some conclusions.

"When we run in practice we'll minimise all the high-performance running and minimise laps in general, but in qualifying and the race we'll use the maximum.

"That's a risk we need to take – we can't compromise."

While nervous about his power plant, Ricciardo is hoping the aerodynamic revisions to the RB11 – including a new nose – will go a long way towards returning Red Bull to competitiveness.

"I don't want to get too excited, but I think this weekend has the potential to put us back in that fight with Williams and get us closer to Ferrari," he said.

"We have a few aero parts which should help us – these are things we have obviously pushed through as quickly as possible.

"Obviously everyone else has got some parts, but this is the biggest step we should make since Melbourne [the season opener on March 15].

"On paper the aero gains should put us closer, but it always depends what the other guys have done.

"For curing some of the balance issues we've had these updates sound promising and I have a positive feeling."

Aerodynamics chief Fallows is more upbeat about the changes, believing that Red Bull – even with genius Adrian Newey now only working half-time on F1 – can bridge the gap to Mercedes through its renowned aero strength alone.

"We went into 2015 knowing we had a long way to catch-up [on Mercedes]," Fallows said.

"Everybody knows where our major deficit is [the power unit], but, frankly, why we're being outperformed is irrelevant.

"We have it in our power, in the aerodynamic department, to do something about it.

"F1 has plenty of performance differentiators: there's the driver, the power unit, the aerodynamics, the use of tyres and so on, but there's really only one aspect over which the aero team can have a fundamental impact.

"So we go into the 'year' [the European GPs] knowing what the deficit is and working on the basis that it's our job in this [aerodynamics] department to close that gap.

"We can do it, because we have the tools to do it.

"We've done it before and the aim is to do it again."

The Renault engine has been estimated to be as much as 100 horsepower down on the benchmark Mercedes and 17-year-old Max Verstappen, the Dutch rookie who has excelled at Red Bull's junior team Toro Rosso this season, has called it "a nightmare".

Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda, who won two of his three driver world titles with Ferrari, has said that the Italian team has almost narrowed its gap to Mercedes in the power stakes.

"Ferrari has closed the gap to nearly zero," Lauda said.

"I think they increased their engine by about 45 horsepower, so my estimate at the moment is that they have same horsepower Mercedes has.

"So the difference depends on the car [chassis] and what the drivers do."

Ricciardo said it was "good for us [at Red Bull] to see that a step like that is possible".

Meanwhile, Valtteri Bottas, the 25-year-old Finnish driver at Williams, is being strongly linked to a Ferrari drive next year in place of his 2007 world champion countryman Kimi Raikkonen.

As much as Ricciardo, who is of Italian heritage, might cherish the prospect of a move to Ferrari he's tied to Red Bull, at least in the short term.

The number of tyres allocated to teams is also under review.

There has been little passing in the Saturday races at the Tasmanian and West Australian rounds of the championship as drivers have preserved tyres for Sunday's 200km race.

Series organisers need to maintain the racing spectacle, especially as media agency Fusion Strategy this week labelled this year's new, predominantly pay-TV coverage a "disaster" – indeed it said so in capital letters.

However, V8 Supercars claims the TV audience is little down on last year while digital viewing is well up.

Winton is one of six remaining rounds with the SuperSprint format – the others are Darwin's Hidden Valley, Queensland Raceway, Sydney Motorsport Park, New Zealand's Pukekohe and Victoria's Phillip Island.

Citroen is set to join the series next year, supplying powertrains to Virgin Racing and coming into competition with French rival Renault, which has been involved from the outset and will still supply the e.dams team next season.

Autosport.com has reported that Citroen may use Formula E "to promote its DS sub-brand as it emerges into a stand-alone marque".

While teams have used a standard Renault powertrain in the initial season, with the seventh round in Monaco tomorrow (Saturday), next season as many as eight teams could be building – in association with established car manufacturers – their own electric motors as well as current inverters and gearboxes.

Maximum power will rise from 150kW to 170kW and keep increasing until the fifth season, in 2018-19, when chassis other than those made by French company Spark will be allowed.

Organisers also envisage that mid-race changes of car will be dropped by then as batteries with longer life are developed.

Formula E boss Alejandro Agag said new batteries would be allowed from season three.

Agag predicted that the cars would be a lot faster next season, but he would not speculate on how many seconds a lap.

"Competition is going to get more serious when the manufacturers come in," he said.

"We had to produce 40 cars in a short space of time [for the first season], so we had to be cautious with the performance – but this is just the starting point."

Jean-Eric Vergne, the French driver who was Daniel Ricciardo's F1 teammate at Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso in 2012-13, said the Formula E cars were "extremely difficult to drive".

"There's not much grip and the cars are heavy," Vergne said.

"It is harder to be quick in this car than an F1 car.

"In an F1 car you know when a corner can be taken flat-out and you can trust the grip.

"Here you cannot trust anything. The car is moving around a lot more and it doesn't feel easy."