MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo vows to improve starts

Daniel Ricciardo has accepted the blame for his dud start in the Chinese Grand Prix, admitted to long having had problems getting off the grid, and vowed to redeem himself at this weekend’s Bahrain GP.

“What happened in China, after looking through everything, yeah, it was my mistake in the end,” Ricciardo said overnight.

Having qualified seventh in Shanghai, his poor start dropped him to 17th on the first lap and, while he fought hard to regain places, wound up ninth at the chequered flag.

Ricciardo was optimistic for a better weekend at the fourth round of the Formula One World Championship and that, “after my start last week, I’m hanging out to get back on the grid and redeem myself”.

“I obviously won’t let that happen again. The important thing is that I’m aware why it happened and what happened (although he hasn’t elaborated) and will move on from there,” Ricciardo said.

“Definitely last year the starts weren’t the strongest on the grid. In general it’s a point that we all want to improve. I think it’s got to be better this weekend.”

While Ricciardo’s record off the start line has not been anywhere near as bad as that of the previous Australian F1 driver, Mark Webber, an end-of-season report by the BBC late last year noted that the West Australian was the driver most overtaken on the opening lap of GPs in 2014.

Yet Ricciardo won three GPs in his first season as Webber’s replacement at Red Bull Racing, the team that had won world titles the previous four years. He also scored five other podiums.

This week Ricciardo received the Laureus ‘Breakthrough of the Year’ Award for his 2014 performance.

While well-deserved, his fortunes have changed greatly this year – with sixth place at the season-opener in Melbourne five weeks ago being his best result. He has been 10th and ninth in the two races since.

Much has been made of the Renault-powered Red Bull car having fallen a long way behind the benchmark Mercedes factory cars, while Ferrari has become the No. 2 team and Mercedes-powered Williams and Ferrari-engined Sauber, which did not score a world championship point last year, are ahead of RBR.

Ricciardo has talked of him and Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat hoping to find “one magic button” to unlock better performance from their RB11 cars and has alluded to it needing to come from chassis set-up as much improvement in Renault’s much-maligned power unit.

“I don’t want to get too caught up in it, but the team has got the ability to make a big step,” Ricciardo said.

“Seeing what Ferrari’s done, it only means it’s within reason that we will be able to do that as well.”

Sebatian Vettel, recruited by Ferrari from RBR with which he became a four-time world champion, won in Malaysia three weeks ago and has been on the podium at the other two GPs, while teammate Kimi Raikkonen has been impressively quick yet unlucky this season.

“We hope for more,” Ricciardo said.

“We’re trying to do what we can. There is progress being made.

“Obviously there’s not much, updates-wise, that can happen in a week (between Shanghai and Bahrain; the major upgrades for all teams will come at the Spanish GP on the second weekend of May).

“We still know there’s more potential in what we’ve got for now. I think we can definitely try to grab that this weekend.

“I don't think myself or Dani have really found a balance or setting that we’re really comfortable with yet.

“I think China took a step forward, we did start to feel more comfortable, but it still obviously didn’t give us a big chunk of lap time that we thought was still in there, so there’s still a few balance things.

“If we keep ironing them out we will find [improvement] ... I don't think it’s a second, but we are going to find a fair few tenths [of a second] that will put us in that group with Williams – and hopefully get us on to the back of the Ferraris.”

Renault’s F1 chief Cyril Abiteboul declared that his company had made real progress with the performance and driveability of its power unit since Melbourne.

“We have taken genuine steps forward and need to focus on our continuing program of improvements while addressing the reliability concerns in parallel.

“There is no issue with Red Bull in the sense they are a team that wants to be successful and has big ambitions.

“We understand they are frustrated. We are not just a supplier – we are racers and we are also extremely frustrated.

“It’s all about understanding each other’s philosophy, issues and supporting each other, rather than trying to drag each other down.

“Maybe we need to assess the way they are working, while they have access to our side of engine development.

“It’s not a short-term project – engine technology is not something you can easily analyse on a Sunday evening – and we can work with each other.”