RED BULL CRASH WON’ T HURT PROGRESS
R ed Bull heads insist that its pre-season testing programme won’t be affected by Daniel Ricciardo’s filming day accident at Silverstone last week.
Ricciardo was at the wheel of the new Tag-heuer-renaultpowered RB14 when he slid off in difficult wet conditions, hours after the team launched its new chassis online.
Ricciardo went off with the rear of the car hitting the barriers at low speed before he completed the team’s full 100km [60 miles] quota of allotted filming day running.
Despite being a low-speed impact, it was enough for the car to sustain damage to the front end, including the suspension, nose, the front wing and the floor.
With all of this year’s crop of F1 cars being completely fresh, spare parts are usually in short supply. However, Red Bull insists that the accident won’t have any knock-on effect for its Barcelona test.
While the day was cut short, Red Bull did complete most of its programme at Silverstone, including some pitstop practice.
Ricciardo said of his first impressions of the car: “It’s hard to tell from a couple of laps but the initial feeling in the car is good. I can already feel that the rear feels pretty settled, even in these pretty poor conditions. Those are encouraging signs. It’s been a long day trying to complete the filming, but better to have that [the accident] here than during testing at Barcelona.
“With the halo, so far I can see fine with it. I’d only done a couple of installs [laps] with it before so it was pretty new today, but I really didn’t notice it was there, which is pretty good. Honestly, unless there’s stuff above, up high, then I don’t see any issues with [using] it at flat tracks.”
Red Bull unveiled its new livery at the Barcelona test ( see right), despite many of the team’s fanbase calling for the blue and black camouflage colours seen at launch to remain for the season.