Daniel Ricciardo says he expects to be able to challenge Williams during the Chinese Grand Prix despite qualifying on the fourth row.
Red Bull looked to have the third quickest car throughout Friday practice before Williams improved on Saturday, with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas splitting the two Ferraris. Ricciardo will start from seventh after a more difficult qualifying session, but believes Williams will be in reach over a race distance.
Asked why the Renault-powered teams dropped away from practice to qualifying, Ricciardo replied: “I’m not sure, maybe Mercedes and Ferrari are putting in a bit more juice on Saturday; I guess they’ve got a bit more juice available as well!
“We obviously would have hoped for a top five but Williams always seems to come on strong on a Saturday. So there’s not too much more we could have done and I think that’s what it is on one lap pace. Race pace I think should look better, at least compared to Williams. I think we can challenge them tomorrow.”
Red Bull team-mate Daniil Kvyat endure a more difficult day as he dropped out in Q2, and he explained it was problems with his Renault engine which hampered his qualifying.
“We were all the time interrupted by small issues with the power unit,” Kvyat said. “We still have to investigate what exactly happened but my only real proper try came right at the end of Q2. With everything so tight we need to be able to find those extra 0.1s or 0.2s. It’s kind of impossible like this, I need a normal session!”
Click here for the full report from qualifying
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