Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Kvyat: ‘We want to be faster’

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Daniil Kvyat says Red Bull needs to be faster after finishing his final day in the RB11 ahead of the first race of the season.

Nico Rosberg set a blistering pace in the Mercedes as he posted a time 1.2s quicker than the rest of the field on Friday having used the soft tyre. Kvyat was over four seconds off the pace as he only used mediums, but he admits the lap time set by Rosberg shows Red Bull it needs to improve to close the gap.

“We had a few little issues and not as many laps as we wanted but we will still have to take the positives out of them and hopefully we’ll get the right set up with Daniel [Ricciardo] in the next two days,” Kvyat said. “We need to sort out a few issues before then.

“There is always room for improvement and we are looking for a step forward because we want to be faster. The competition level seems to be very high but we will keep our heads up, put the positives together and get the most out of our package.

“Drivability is not such a big issue, not the main problem we are focusing on. We are trying to get the car going properly. Today was my last day in the car before Melbourne and I’m happy with the levels I reached with my group of guys, we are heading quite ready for Melbourne and try to do our best there.”

Despite his call for Red Bull to seek more performance, Kvyat says the team shouldn’t pay too much attention to Mercedes’ pace.

“I saw the Rosberg time and obviously they are fast; that doesn’t surprise anyone, we just have to focus on our own business at this stage. If we compare to them at this stage it will not help us so we are focusing on our job.”

Full times and day two as it happened

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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.