Ferrari fight is 'confusing' for Red Bull - Ricciardo

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Daniel Ricciardo says Ferrari's inconsistent pace is "confusing" for Red Bull as the two teams fight for second in the constructors' championship.

Red Bull has had the better results over the past three races, but Ferrari was hampered by Sebastian Vettel retiring in Malaysia, while both drivers also had penalties in the Japanese Grand Prix. With Ferrari quick at Suzuka - as Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen finished ahead of Ricciardo - the Australian admits the fluctuations in form between both teams is difficult to understand.

"Ferrari have been extremely fast lately," Ricciardo said. "In Japan they did a very good job. Probably quicker than we expected. But is has been a bit like that. Some places we have been quicker where we did not expect. But then we’ve gone to places like Japan where we thought we would be quicker than them and we weren’t necessarily.

"So it is still a bit confusing for everyone to know who has got the better package and what tracks suit who, but maybe they just got it right that weekend and put it altogether. Seb still did not end up with a podium. I have not watched the complete race but it looked like he had a car for the podium, so they probably underachieved what the car was capable of. But nonetheless I expect them to be pretty quick here.

"It is going to be close again with … it is sort of just guess work now. The high speed stuff in sector 1 is in a way similar to what we have in Suzuka sector 1, and they were pretty strong there, so we will have our work cut out. If both of our cars want to finish in front of them we will have to execute pretty well."

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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.