Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo looking beyond Monza for success

Daniel Ricciardo is willing to take short term pain at the Italian Grand Prix to allow Red Bull to chase success in Singapore.

Red Bull struggled in the early part of the season as power unit reliability problems masked issues with the RB11's chassis. However, the team has made clear improvements in recent races - with both Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat finishing on the podium in Hungary - with the biggest progress being made in terms of chassis performance.

With Monza requiring a strong power unit, Ricciardo says he is willing to take an engine penalty to ensure the team can use new units in Singapore, where he expects to be fighting at the front.

"Looking now towards the last part of the season, the last couple of races have been our strongest, as of late, Budapest and Spa have gone well for us," Ricciardo said. "I think in terms of understanding the car we’re much more on top of it now than we were earlier in the season.

"I think the chassis is back to a really strong level. Monza’s not obviously a circuit that suits us particularly. We've got the penalties as well, so you know that’s obviously a strategic things as well – take the penalty here rather than in Singapore where we expect to be very competitive.

"Then, yeah, have some fun here on Sunday, come through the field as far forward as we can and then Singapore, we can really fight for a podium there."

Click here for Chris Medland's Italian Grand Prix preview and bold podium prediction.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.