Ricciardo ready to hammer it out in the gym

Daniel Ricciardo will be pulling out all the stops in the gym over the winter when he readies for what he expects will be a high intensity 2017 season.

With a massive overhaul of Formula 1's regulations, marked by wider tyres and increased downforce, next season's machines are expected to extract more from drivers physically than the current generation of F1 cars.

"For me it is going to be more fun personally because we will do a bit more strength training and I kind of enjoy it," said the always smiling Aussie.

"The last couple of years, you are doing a lot of training just to keep your weight down, so a lot of longer endurance but not very high intensity to not put muscle on.

"So in a way the training we have done is a little bit more boring, whereas now we can actually push harder in training and we can afford to put on some muscle and things like this. So it will be more challenging but more rewarding."

The Red Bull driver who won this year's Malaysian Grand Prix is also happy about this year's extended hiatus before drivers get back into their cars for testing at the end of February in Barcelona.

"In a way it is quite nice that the testing is late. That gives us a good chance to physically get a bit more time for ourselves to train.

"That is one thing with such a long season, a lot of races during the year, you don’t get a lot of time to train physically as well as you would like. You get a day here a day there, you don’t really get like a week of proper training, very rarely."

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