Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo ‘excited’ to see McLaren

Daniel Ricciardo says he is “excited” to see how quick McLaren is this season as Honda enters F1 as the team’s engine supplier.

While Mercedes had the dominant power unit in 2014, the arrival of Honda makes it tough to gauge where McLaren will be in the pecking order. While Ricciardo is hopeful that Red Bull can close the gap to Mercedes he will be keeping a close eye on how McLaren gets on at the first pre-season test which starts in Jerez on Sunday.

“I expect Williams and that to be strong again, but the big question mark is McLaren with Honda,” Ricciardo said. “I’m actually excited to see how they go. I think they’ve obviously got the potential to do very well, so that’s probably the one that everyone’s going to be watching to see what sort of step they’ve made and what they bring to the table. I think for the rest everyone will make standard steps but it will be interesting to see what McLaren to do.”

And Ricciardo says it isn’t just the new engine supplier which could see McLaren make a big step forward, highlighting the whole infrastructure of the team as giving it the potential to challenge at the front.

“I guess I don’t have a feeling yet, it’s probably more a curiosity. It’s the one team that is more unknown. Ferrari, they’ve got the opportunity to make a big step, I think they underperformed last year but there’s probably no real strong signs that they’re going to gain a second. Whereas McLaren could gain that second if everything gels with Honda.

“Obviously no one knows how quick the Honda could be so that’s probably why I’m saying it will be more exciting to see whether they’re really quick or whether they’re back in the pack. So they’ve probably got the best opportunity to make that big difference going to something completely new. Also they’ve got good people behind them and pretty good backing financially, so they’ve got the cards to do it, it’s now whether they pull it off.”

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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.