I can feel a step forward - Ricciardo
Red Bull Racing and today's test driver Daniel Ricciardo proved happy with the first day of testing with the RB11 as the Australian admitted he felt a clear improvement over last year's RB10.
The RB11 debuted in the morning without an official launch but with a striking black and white “dazzle” livery, similar to those used to camouflage prototype road cars. Daniel Ricciardo managed to complete 35 laps on its debut.
“We got going pretty well this morning and I got a few laps under my belt,” said Daniel Ricciardo. “So the first impressions are good. We’ll get a few more laps over the next few days, but so far everything seems pretty encouraging. I can feel a step forward. I won’t go into too much detail but it’s there. We didn’t do a whole lot of laps but definitely more than at this test last year! In general everything is behaving as it should. Obviously we had a couple of issues, but once the car is running it’s all going pretty normally. A good first day, there are some positive signs there.”
Commenting on the interim livery Daniel added: “The livery’s cool. It’s a testing specification for us but I think it looks really good. Maybe I need a matching helmet.”
Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin added: “It’s no exaggeration to say that today represented a good day for the team and for the RB11. The car preparation has been good, the day’s running was by and large excellent and we’ve already gathered a lot of information. The day generally went according to plan, starting cautiously, building up the length of the runs and learning all the time. We had a small issue with the brake controls system around lunchtime but you’re always going to have little niggles like that on day’s like this. We stopped running late in the afternoon with a technical issue, but it wasn’t too serious. An alarm went off on the engine and at that stage of the day, knowing that an investigation would take time we chose to stop. Aside from that, everything went pretty as we hoped.”
