Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo confident despite power unit issues

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Daniel Ricciardo says the experience of 2014 means he is still confident despite Red Bull’s final day of testing being hit by power unit issues.

The RB11 stopped at the end of the pit lane early on the final morning, with the team subsequently discovering an ERS issue which kept the car in the garage for a number of hours. While able to complete solid mileage in the afternoon session, Red Bull still had the third lowest lap total on Sunday but Ricciardo says the issues don’t overly concern him.

“It’s not too worrying, it happens and it is still early on,” Ricciardo said. “You prefer not to have it, for sure, but better than last year.

“I think every bit of mileage we can do helps and we have a couple of [filming days] ahead. They are definitely more for the guys behind the laptops to try and find a bit more out of it. Personally I feel ready to race now so we’ll be good come Melbourne.”

And Ricciardo says Red Bull was still able to complete some aspects of its programme which were not deemed crucial on the final day.

”We had a bit of an ERS problem in the morning but in the end we still did more or less what we needed to do. We had a few extra runs today which were just if we had the time. So we still did a bit on the lower fuel - more performance style - and then some longer runs as well. I think it was okay, the good news is we are going to Melbourne next.

“It’s hard to say [where we are]. I think Mercedes are the ones in front but then I think it is pretty close between Williams, Ferrari and us at the moment. We’ll see in Melbourne.”

The final day of testing as it happened

Click here for the gallery from day four of the final test

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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.