Daniel Ricciardo expects a strong challenge from Ferrari in Austin

By foxsports
Published

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo expects a strong challenge from Ferrari in Austin this weekend, and the Australian says his team must get everything right in order to beat its rival for second place in the constructors’ championship.

The Ferraris qualified together on the second row in Japan, but both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen were penalized, handing the advantage to the RBR drivers for race day.

“I think that Ferrari have been extremely fast lately,” said Ricciardo. “In Japan they did a very good job. Probably quicker than we expected. But it’s been a bit like that, some places we’ve been quicker where we didn’t expect, but then we’ve gone to places like Japan where we thought we would be quicker than them, and we weren’t necessarily.

“It’s still a bit confusing for everyone to know who’s got the better package and what tracks suit who. Maybe they just got it right that weekend, and put it all together. Obviously Seb still didn’t end up with a podium. I haven’t watched the complete race back, but it looked like he had a car for the podium. I think they probably underachieved what the car was capable of. But nonetheless I expect them to be I guess pretty quick here.”

Ricciardo believes that the sweeping corners early in the lap will suit the Italian team: “I think it’s going to be close. It’s sort of guesswork now. The high-speed stuff in Sector One is in a way similar to maybe what we have in Suzuka Sector  One, and they were pretty strong there. I think we will have our work cut out, if both our cars want to finish in front of them, we’ll have to execute everything pretty well.”

Ricciardo also said there was a reason why he suffered in comparison to Max Verstappen in Suzuka, joking in an American accent: “I just had too many ribs, I was a bit too heavy down the rear, and the car was squatting low. The team said you gotta watch your diet sir, and I said, well hell, if I’m going to drive fast I’m going to drive fast no matter what. In the end it bit me in the backside, but hey, you live and you learn, as they say.”

He then added a more plausible explanation: “I think to be honest I think we did have a slightly different setup, I think maybe with the rear springs, and I think that did mean I had to run a different ride height, and perhaps that had an influence.”