Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo eyeing title tilt in 2015

Daniel Ricciardo has his sights set on mounting a sustained title challenge in 2015 after his breakthrough year with Red Bull last season.

While Mercedes dominated to win both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships, Ricciardo was the only other driver to win a race other than Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. With three victories under his belt last year – and his pre-season aiming having been to win one race – when asked what his early target is for 2015, Ricciardo replied: “Win more races!

“And hopefully more results in a title fight. A proper one; I was hanging on by a string last year for a bit but a realistic one this year would be good.”

With Renault able to develop its power unit throughout the season, Ricciardo said he is hopeful that Red Bull can take the fight to Mercedes.

“It’s going to help us definitely. Everyone’s going to improve, that’s a fact, but you’d like to think Mercedes’ room for improvement is smaller than everyone else’s because I think they made so much of it last year.

“I hope I’m right, I hope they don’t have another 50% step on top of what they’ve got. I think there’s more room for us – us, Ferrari – to make that gap. McLaren with Honda is going to be interesting, so obviously Mercedes is now the hunted and hopefully we can close that. Time will tell.”

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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.