MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo 'pretty happy' with Renault

Daniel Ricciardo is feeling a lot happier with the brakes of his Renault RS19 going into this weekend's fourth round of the Formula 1 World Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Just as well too, as the carsales.com.au global ambassador says braking is the biggest challenge at the fastest street circuit in the championship.

What he likes about the circuit is that "there are lots of places to overtake" – the skill with which he made his reputation in five years and seven victories at Red Bull Racing before his switch to Renault this year.

Ricciardo won what he recalls as a "crazy, wild" race at Baku in 2017 but last year he and RBR teammate Max Verstappen infamously collided – because Verstappen wouldn't surrender position – in what probably convinced the Australian he needed to change teams.

"The long, winding straight lends itself to massive slipstreaming and close racing," Ricciardo says of Baku.

"Braking is the biggest challenge. It's tricky and you have to commit and brake as late as you can, especially at turns one and three after the straights.

"When you aim to brake late, it means you're constantly on the limit and there is no room for error.

"You have to find that limit under braking and that is probably the hardest part to get right in Baku because the walls are close.

"We've seen in the past any small error means you're in the wall and it's game over."

Ricciardo says he has come to feel more confident in the RS19's braking system.

The official F1 test in Bahrain after the second round of the championship helped him address a "lack of feeling through braking" after he had been "locking the brakes quite easily without kind of understanding why a lot of the time".

He was much happier with his brakes two weeks ago in Shanghai, where he notched his first finish with Renault – seventh place – after also for the first time outqualifying German teammate Nico Hulkenberg, whose turn it was to have car reliability issues in China.

"It [braking] wasn't an area I was complaining about as much or struggling with as much [in Shanghai]," he said.

"At Red Bull it was definitely a strength of mine, having that feeling and confidence on braking, on overtaking and on one lap [qualifying] as well".

Baku is the last of the long-haul races from the team bases before the start of the European 'season' in Spain on the second weekend of May.

The Renaults will have new front and rear wings and a small update to their sidepods this weekend, while the bigger teams – especially Ferrari and now-Honda-powered RBR – will have bigger updates.

Ricciardo says his RS19 is "not perfect" yet but the improvement in braking had been "a breakthrough".

"I'm pretty happy," he said. "It's definitely been a positive step."

Six expressions of interest have been lodged with the Bathurst Regional Council for staging a fifth annual event at Mt Panorama, which is already allowed under NSW legislation.

EOIs have been made by Supercars; the Australian Racing Group in partnership with the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport; Ontic Sports Pty Ltd, Mountain Motor Sports, Creventic International and 24 Hours of Lemons Australia Pty Ltd.

Supercars already stages the Bathurst 1000 each October and the 12-Hour in February.

ARG is the organiser of the new TCR 2-litre touring car series starting at Sydney Motorsport Park next month.

Ontic is the promoter of the Australian Production Car Series, although not the Bathurst Six-Hour production car race at Easter – that's run by James O'Brien's Yeehah Events.

Peter Washington's Mountain Motor Sports runs the Australian Tarmac Rally Championship, sanctioned by the Australian Auto Sport Alliance as opposed to the CAMS Australian Targa Championship.

Creventic is a Dutch company that runs enduros and wants to stage "an international 24-hour race for GTs and touring cars" as part of its Championship of the Continents competition.

The 24 Hours of Lemons runs enduros for cheap old cars with no performance modifications but some safety features.

Like Mountain Motor Sports, its events are sanctioned by AASA rather than CAMS and the NSW government's Mt Panorama Motor Racing Act 1989 would need to be amended if the council wanted to accept either of their EOIs.

Bathurst mayor Graeme Hanger has said there won't be a decision on a fifth event until at least August – and there is no certainty that there will be any addition to the existing four (which include November's Challenge Bathurst – an exclusive opportunity for participants to drive street or track cars in sprint, regularity and 'drive experience' sessions).

Targa Tasmania, Australia's premier tarmac rally, is on next week for the 28th time.

More than 260 cars are entered in the six-day event, which is the second and major round of the CAMS Australian Targa Championship with 33 stages and covering 2000 kilometres.

The first three days are in the island state's north and north-east with overnight stops in Launceston, before heading west through Burnie to Strahan on the west coast, then into Hobart on the fifth day, with Saturday's final competition south of the capital before ending back in Hobart.

Tasmanian Jason White and his uncle John in a 2016 Dodge Viper will be chasing an eighth outright victory that would equal the record of Jim Richards and Barry Oliver.

Richards, best known as a seven-time Bathurst 1000 winner, has stepped back from full-on competition but will drive a 1978 Porsche 911 for the first three days of Targa in the Shannons Classic Rallye in which the 30 cars entered must be more than 30 years old and observe speed limits.

"Targa Tasmania has been a major part of my career for the last 26 years and this will be a nice, relaxing way to still be part of it," Richards said.

Picture courtesy of XPB / James Moy Photography