Day ends early for Ricciardo as RBR hits new problem

Red Bull hit problems once again in Bahrain today as Daniel Ricciardo’s running was cut short by what the team called a previously unseen mechanical issue.

The Australian had logged some useful mileage in the first half of the day, although his best lap was 6.5s off the frontrunning pace.

“It was going OK,” said Ricciardo, who remains optimistic. “I did some good laps and those came off the back of the more than 50 laps Seb did yesterday, so we’re getting there. Obviously, I would have liked to do more this afternoon but we still have tomorrow ahead of us and it’s important to be ready for that. The car is definitely making progress though. It’s coming together bit by bit.

“We’d love a big chunk all at once but obviously that’s not the way these things work, so we have to be a bit patient for now. However, it is coming and we’re heading in the right direction. Tomorrow it would be nice to get more laps in and then roll on next week.”

Meanwhile RBR’s Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum said: “After yesterday’s good work we had another positive period overnight with the car build, which we’re getting quite good at, and it looked good this morning. We were focused on short runs for Daniel, as the car feels very different to the one we had in Jerez, and we wanted to build things up gradually for him.

“We made more changes over lunch and in doing so we came across a mechanical issue that we hadn’t encountered before, and because of its nature it means we have to take the car apart. As everyone in the pit lane is finding out this is a long process, so we decided to suspend running in the afternoon so that we can be ready for the final day. These issues are of course frustrating but this was unrelated to the others so it’s just a case of tackling each issue as it appears.”