REDBULLMAY BEFAVOURITE
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Daniel Ricciardo reckons that Red Bull Racing could be considered as a favourite for this year’s Formula 1 World Championship, so long as it can avoid a repeat of the troubled opening stages of last season.
While the Milton Keynes team spent much of 2017 lagging behind both Mercedes and Ferrari as the third-best package on the grid, its rate of development across the year was arguably the most impressive.
The team lost ground early in the year after correlation difficulties with its windtunnel took the development of the car’s aerodynamics down the wrong path, stripping the team of one of its strengths.
Once Red Bull had overcome the early issues, it made rapid progress to catch the front two, scoring three wins over the second half of the season.
“We just started off on the wrong foot [in 2017],” said Ricciardo. “But the rate of development was amazing, so I’m hoping if we can start on the right foot for 2018, you could argue that we would be the favourites if we did that.
“If we started with Mercedes and Ferrari [levels of performance], our development is pretty strong. Last year we started off the train. I guess the direction they [the designers] thought was going to be the right way wasn’t. All the development was going towards this kind of aero configuration and that wasn’t the way to go.
“We saw in testing last year, our car looked very basic. Looks aren’t everything but it shows that the performance wasn’t there. We started in the wrong direction and that spiralled for the first races, but we brought it back.”
Ricciardo believes the world championship fight could have been very different had the team made a better start.
“We would have been in the hunt [for the title],” he said. “We would have taken it to the end. At the start of the year, the chassis wasn’t where it needed to be. So it was both [chassis and engine, weaknesses].
“Now our chassis has improved a lot. It’s back to the scenario where it’s more engine than chassis at the moment. The chassis is still quite hard to get going, but when it does it’s very strong.”