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Daniel Ricciardo believes he extracted every bit from his RB10 to qualify on the front row for tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Ricciardo’s short Red Bull career has been nothing short of impressive with the Australian having the edge over his world champion teammate Sebastian Vettel in three out of the four qualifying sessions held so far.
And today, the 24-year-old managed to out-qualify Vettel by more than half a second to align himself with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton on the front row of the grid.“I couldn’t have got anything extra out of the car on that last lap, I got everything I could out of it; for that I’m pleased and I got rewarded with a front row place for tomorrow,’’ Ricciardo said after qualifying.
In the light of Red Bull’s strong long run pace in Friday Practice, the former Toro Rosso driver is confident of a strong result in tomorrow’s race.
“I feel like I’m ready to get a good result, I know it’s never going to be easy but I’m prepared for the fight tomorrow and I’ll embrace it.”
“I’m really pleased. The team is closing the gap to the front and we’re getting better each race,’’ he added.
Sebastian Vettel was equally upbeat about giving a fight to Mercedes, citing improvements made since the Bahrain Grand Prix.
“I think we are in the best position to try and give them a hard time in the race, so let’s see. We made some improvements with the car this weekend and I think the test in Bahrain helped, but we still have some work to do. I would like to be first of course, but I have a good position to start the race,’’ Vettel said.
Team principal Christian Horner came up with some kind words for his drivers, praising their performance in wet conditions.
“A great job from both of our guys in tricky conditions to split the Mercedes. Daniel and Sebastian progressed well through the two sessions to get comfortably into Q3.
“It was a brilliant performance by Dan again, to qualify on the front row. Sebastian didn’t have the cleanest second run in Q3, but both cars have great grid positions for tomorrow’s race with P2 and P3,’’ Horner said.
