Daniel Ricciardo admits he is concerned by the engine problem which hit him as he exited the final corner in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Following a solid race, Ricciardo was accelerating out of the final corner towards the finish line on the last lap when his engine failed in a cloud of smoke. The Red Bull had enough momentum to cross the line before Ricciardo jumped out and he says he isn't hopeful the Renault engine can be salvaged.

“Just out of the last corner it just went up in smoke,” Ricciardo said. “We’ll have to see how severe it is, of course. It didn’t look good but at least we got over the line and consolidated a pretty lonely sixth today but I felt it was all we could do.”

Despite the problem, Ricciardo was pleased with the points he managed to score as he sees encouraging signs for Red Bull’s progress following a poor start to the year.

“I thought [the car] was pretty good to be honest. With the balance there’s a few things here and there but generally as a package I thought it was good enough to probably fight with the Williams. So I think through the corners we’re more or less there, we’re probably just losing time down the straights at the moment.

“The chassis is working better, I think the weekend went more productively for us so we move on to Europe, a few more updates and try to get this bad boy further up the grid.”

Click here for analysis of the development war between Ferrari and Mercedes 

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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.

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