Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Kvyat unfazed by ‘scary’ Mercedes gap

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Daniil Kvyat claims it is too early to focus on gaps after both Mercedes drivers finished well clear of the field in free practice for the Australian Grand Prix.

The 20-year-old Russian, who is making his Red Bull debut this weekend after graduating from sister team Toro Rosso, had a steady day in the RB11 as he racked up 45 laps and went sixth fastest in FP2. However, Kvyat’s quickest mark remained some 2.3s adrift of Nico Rosberg’s table-topping time as well as over 1.6s off Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari-powered third place.

“Maybe it all looks scary and everything but we always try to do our best,” said Kvyat. “We’ll work really hard tonight and see what we can do tomorrow. And then, we start looking at the gaps.

“So I’d say it’s a bit early to look at the gaps, even though of course it might look different from our side… The only thing we can do right now is try to work and catch everyone, and try to improve.”

While Kvyat was able to enjoy two trouble-free sessions in Melbourne, team-mate Daniel Ricciardo’s progress was plagued by power unit issues that limited the Australian’s running to 9 laps on Friday. Asked on how he coped with the responsibility of gathering most of the day’s data, Kvyat remained equally unfazed.

“I think I was just doing my job really, focussing on the things that we were meant to focus on. And everything, I think, went according to plan. More or less. We have all the data that we need. We’ll do our best job possible tomorrow to come up with improvements.”

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Australian Grand Prix

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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.