- Belgian GP- FP2
Red Bull searching for ideal compromise - Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo admits Red Bull is still trying to find the ideal compromise to maximise its pace and move away from the midfield at Spa-Francorchamps this weekend.
Ricciardo finished ninth and eighth in Friday's practice sessions while Sebastian Vettel's mileage was severely limited due to technical trouble at a circuit Red Bull is expected to struggle at. Red Bull's car means it is expected to struggle in Spa and Ricciardo says Friday was a fair reflection of where the team stands.
"We knew it would be difficult to break away from the middle of the field," Ricciardo said. As we've seen, the Force Indias, the McLarens, and a few others like the Toro Rossos are strong. Hopefully tomorrow we find a little bit more speed and get ahead of them but it was a pretty standard day, deep down it was what we expected. Hopefully tomorrow we get more of what we hoped."
"A step forward? It's hard to say, it's a unique track. We run really low downforce here for the kind of track it is so obviously we try to compromise a bit with straight-line speed but I think if the track keeps rubbering in and grips up over the weekend, and see what the weather does, it should come more into our hands."
At Spa teams traditionally shed their cars of downforce to maximise straight-line speed and Ricciardo believes this is an area Red Bull can still work on tomorrow to improve its pace.
"In terms of straight-line speed, there's probably not much more we can get out of it. In sector two we are trying to find a bit of a compromise between sector one - obviously its all pretty much all flat out so we can't bleed too much straight-line speed there and rely on our mechanical downforce in sector two. There's probably a few more things we can tweak tomorrow to find a better compromise but today was it was really, there wasn't much we left on the table."
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