Canada will define Red Bull's season - Ricciardo

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Daniel Ricciardo believes the Canadian Grand Prix next weekend will display how successful Red Bull can be this season.

Red Bull won the Spanish Grand Prix courtesy of Max Verstappen after the two Mercedes drivers collided at the start, and Ricciardo then took pole position and should have won the Monaco Grand Prix but for a pit stop error.

An updated Renault power unit gave Red Bull a gain of around 0.2s per lap in Monaco, and with that increase in performance expected to be worth half a second in Canada, Ricciardo says the race will be a marker for the rest of the season.

"I think Canada is going to be interesting," Ricciardo said. "There’s obviously a lot of... it’s still a street circuit but there’s a long straight and it’s a bit more of a horsepower circuit.

"I think that will be a sign; if we can be quick in a couple of weeks, then I think we can be quick really for the remainder of the season. If we can fight for a podium in Canada then we should be able to fight everywhere else.

"We knew [Monaco] would be an opportunity for us to win but yeah, probably in two weeks time we’ll have a better idea really how competitive we can be, not only on these type of circuits but all the others."

Ricciardo currently sits third in the drivers' championship, 16 points behind Lewis Hamilton and 40 points adrift of championship leader Nico Rosberg.

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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.