'Red Bull blocked 2015 Le Mans bid' says Ricciardo

Red Bull Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo has revealed that he wanted to take part in last year's Le Mans 24 Hours race, but that the team stepped in to put a stop to his hopes of participating.

Ricciardo told Australian motorsports magazine Auto Action that it still remained his dream to follow his compatriot and predecessor at Red Bull Mark Webber by taking part on the most famous endurance race in the world at some point in the future.

"Le Mans would be cool. To be honest, I wanted to do it last year," said the 26-year-old from Perth.

"There was maybe some opportunities to do it last year, but it was a bit too much with everything going on and the team preferred me to just focus on Formula One. It makes sense for now," he admitted.

"I guess the beauty of Le Mans is it can happen 10 years from now. It doesn’t need to be done today."

By contrast, fellow Formula One driver Nico Hülkenberg did get a release to take part in last year's Le Mans race from the rival Force India team - and he even went on to win the event in a Porsche LMP1 entry along with co-drivers Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber.

"Obviously Hülkenberg went and did it and won," said Ricciardo. "So that can happen. I would love to have done it."

There's no possibility for any currently Formula One driver to take part in this year's Le Mans, as the new European Grand Prix on the streets of Azerbaijan's capital city Baku will take place on the same weekend.

Qualifying will take place while the Le Mans cars are in action, but the FIA has moved the start of the Azerbaijan race back to 6pm local time to avoid a direct clash with the climax of the famed endurance event.

The new time means the inaugural GP in Baku will now start just three hours before sunset, making it a twilight event. The previous day's qualifying session will also start at this later time, but should be completed by the time the light starts to fade.

Ricciardo might consider himself lucky to still have Formula One plans for that weekend: at one point last season it looked like Red Bull might make good on its threat to pull out of the sport if it couldn't seal a suitable engine deal in time.

While that crisis was eventually averted, Ricciardo admitted that he'd needed to start thinking about fallback plans in the event that his team disappeared out from under him before the 2016 season.

"There were thoughts in the back of my head," he conceded. "I assumed something would’ve popped up when it needed to. I had faith.

"What I would have done otherwise, I don’t know. But definitely racing of some sort. Maybe NASCAR, but I’m aware that wouldn’t be easy to adapt."

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