The Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo performed well throughout the two ninety minute free practice session at the Bahrain International Circuit on Friday with the Aussie racer finishi8ng the opening session in P2 behind Sebastian Vettel followed by a P3 finish in the second session. Over the course of the day Daniel completed a total of 50 laps, 22 in session one and 28 in session 2.
“Today was good. FP1 is always a tricky one here in order to set the car up, because it's so hot and the race is so cool so you have to be careful not to get carried away with what you learn during that first session,” Dan said. “FP2 looked alright though. Normally the grip gets a lot better when the track cools down in the late afternoon, so that helped but the wind changed and the way the wind turned actually made the track slower.”
However, it wasn't all smooth sailing as he did lose some track time in FP2, but not due to any fault of his own….
“I think the low fuel pace looks competitive, but probably too competitive for now. In FP2 I lost track time after hitting someone's T-wing.”
After the day's work was done, Ricciardo looked at things quite carefully and still believes that Ferrari and Mercedes will be ahead come qualifying here later today….
“I do like it but I expect Ferrari and Mercedes to sneak further ahead tomorrow. But in general it was a good day. We couldn't really ask for more. The long runs looked like they had a bit more pace so that was probably a bit more representative. I think we did what we had to do today so I'm happy. Let's make tomorrow a good one also."
