Fired up Ricciardo mindful of adrenaline rush in home race

Daniel Ricciardo says he will have to “control my adrenaline” at next weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, with the Red Bull ace mindful of the emotional drain his home event can represent.

The 26-year-old enters his third campaign with his current team in stronger shape than in the past two seasons when Red Bull’s winter preparations did not go so smoothly amid reliability issues.

“Testing’s been a lot better for us this year,” Ricciardo said. “You still don’t really know where you are until you get to Melbourne, but we’re better prepared than we were this time last year so we can use that as some confidence.

“Me personally, I’m ready to go – I was ready in January and I’m still ready now! Just keen for those lights to go out and to get racing! I think everyone’s excited to get going, but even if the race was elsewhere I think there’s no one more excited than me to go racing, period! But the fact that it’s in Oz and I’m going to have more supporters than anyone else, hell yeah I’m excited!”

The ever-grinning Australian will be a man in high demand Down Under and though he relishes the prospect of racing in front of his fans Ricciardo is also aware of not wasting too much energy before 2016’s curtain raiser.

“In fact, I’m going to have to control my adrenaline because there’s a long build up over the weekend. Sunday’s cool, it’s probably the quietest day of the week for us in terms of other obligations so it’s really time to just focus on the race.”

“When I’m on the grid on Sunday, it’ll just be full focus, full determination, knowing that I’ve got a battle on my hands the next hour and a half, a battle I’ll look forward to!”

Exclusive Q&A with Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa

INTERVIEW: Max Verstappen: The man in demand

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter