Red Bull have had a mixed start to the F1 2018 season as their new package seems good enough to be competing for race wins against Ferrari and Mercedes, but they couldn’t really turn it on during qualifying in Australia. Raceday though was different, as Ricciardo performed exceedingly well.
Daniel Ricciardo put in the fastest lap of the race in Melbourne, showing the potential of that Red Bull package, one that was talked about a lot during testing in Barcelona.
Ricciardo finished 4th in Melbourne with Verstappen taking the 6th spot and despite the impressive performance, Horner feels that Red Bull hasn’t quite realised its full potential yet, and Horner is a little concerned about how the Renault engine is coming along.
“It’s extenuated [in Melbourne],” Chris Horner said in an interview with Racer.
“Bahrain you can overtake, China you can overtake. But it exposes you.
“You’ve only got to look at the speed trap where all the Renault engines were grouped together with varying amounts of downforce on the car, so that’s where we need to make progress.”
“There are bits in the pipeline,” he continued.
Horner feels that Renault need to divulge more information with respect to the engine and performance.
“That’s more of a question for Renault than for me because they’re obviously not divulging everything they’re up to, but it’s certainly something we’re pushing for.” he said.
Horner once again emphasised on bringing about a change with respect to engine regulations, wherein cars would be forced to have the same engine from the moment they left the garage till the end of the grand prix.
“Alternatively, one could say perhaps you should have the same engine mode, like in parc ferme when the cars leave for qualifying – maybe engine modes should be the same from the moment you leave the garage from the end of the grand prix.” Horner concluded.
