Daniel Ricciardo Set the Record Straight About VCARB Cloning Red Bull Performance: “We’ll Get Our Answer in 48 Hours”

Last year, Daniel Ricciardo stunned the F1 community when he navigated the AT04 (now VCARB-01) to P7 at the Mexican Grand Prix. From that point on, there have been whispers that Red Bull will abandon their ‘do it yourself‘ approach and assist their sister team in developing the vehicle. As time passed, the rumors even claimed that Red Bull’s RB19 from the previous year would be cloned in the new VCARB-01. Ricciardo, though, has recently played down any such notions.

During his conversation with Planet F1, Ricciardo said, “We’ll get our answer in 48 hours but I think some people think we’re going to the Aston of last year or the pink Mercedes of a few years ago.” Although the new model leans toward the RB19, on a closer look at its under-bite sidepod air entry and sidepod undercut, there are not any similarities.

In light of this, Ricciardo said that although the car does have some elements that “are allowed to use,” nothing is actually present in the 01 model similar to RB19. This explanation from Ricciardo stems after the pre-season testing.

In that period, the VCARB 01 demonstrated some improvement over the previous year. This prompted the competitors to speculate that the VCARB01 car would finish in the middle of the pack or even make a run for the podium this year.

In response to these rumors, Ricciardo says it would shock him if he is able to contend for the podium in the VCARB-01. Nevertheless, it was at the very end that Ricciardo ‘realistically’ spoke up about the car. He stated that for now, he and the team have an idea of the gap with the leaders, which he believes at the moment is still pretty “big“.

How did the pre-season testing go for Daniel Ricciardo’s VCARB 01?

Daniel Ricciardo’s recently introduced VCARB 01 underwent a successful pre-season testing at the Bahrain track last weekend. In his new car, the Honey Badger finished fourth-fastest. Despite the same, Ricciardo doesn’t want to get too excited this early on in the season and wants to proceed cautiously.

During his conversation with Planet F1, the 34-year-old said, “I know some people are quite excited about us coming into the season, but I want to play a little bit cautious because we have a decent car, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

Ricciardo at first just wants to try and help V-CARB solidify their place in the midfield by consistently getting into Q3 before they can think of reducing the gap to the frontrunners. When it comes to the gap with the bigger teams, V-CARB still has a long way to go as Ricciardo was 1.2 seconds slower than Red Bull’s Max Verstappen during pre-season testing.