Bulls hang together in qualifying, but race prospects differ

For his last qualifying session with Red Bull Racing, Daniel Ricciardo had the upper hand over team mate Max Verstappen, the pair concluding their evening in Abu Dhabi fifth and sixth on the timesheet.

It was a relatively straightforward 60 minutes for the bulls, with Ricciardo fortunately spared more drama after the mechanical issue he had encountered in FP3.

The Aussie's ultra-soft gamble in Q2 paid off, even if it was a close call, and ensured he starts Sunday's race, like Mercedes and Ferrari, on the purple-rimmed tyre.

"Today was fast and fun, it was actually an enjoyable qualifying session," said Ricciardo.

"I thought I had Kimi for fourth but he just got me by half a tenth. I would be happier with fourth than fifth but we got through Q2 on the ultrasoft which was our target.

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"There is a big step, maybe one second between the ultra and the hyper so we needed to do more or less the perfect lap on the ultra to make it through Q2.

"It was very close and I was in P10 but the team made the call to abort the lap and we just made it through."

According to the Honey Badger, the gap between the bulls and their Mercedes and Ferrari counterparts isn't as bad as it looks.

"Fifth and sixth as a team doesn’t look that special on paper but the gap is small and we are competitive.

"We have solid race pace and hopefully our degradation will be better than Ferrari and Mercedes and we can apply the pressure.

"I’ll be staring down the two Ferraris on the grid, they’re in my way of a podium at the moment so I’ll try and get in front of them as quickly as possible.

"All weekend our car has been strong, especially in the last sector, so the podium fight is on."

Like his team mate, Verstappen was locked out of the first two rows of the grid and labeled his sixth place position a disappointment after struggling with the balance and tyre temperatures on his ultra-soft RB14.

The Dutchman found himself at risk of missing the Q3 cut and was forced to mount a set of hyper-softs to ensure his safe passage, but with a potential drawback for the race.

"I’m not overly happy with how qualifying went today," he admitted.

"After the first run in Q3 I knew we needed to get the tyre temperatures down in order to improve the grip. We tried this for my final run but unfortunately they were still too high, this meant I aborted my flying lap as I was just sliding everywhere, especially in the final sector.

"The car balance wasn’t quite as good as it has been in previous qualifying sessions, I wasn’t able to get what I wanted out of the lap.

"Starting on hypersofts wasn’t the original plan but it could be interesting, being on a different compound to some of the others could prove helpful.

"Overtaking is a bit tricky around here, definitely not as straight forward as Brazil. It will take strategy and a bit of luck to be on top tomorrow.

"Our race pace once again looks good, so I’ll do my best to get on the podium."

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