- Jerez Test - Day Three
Renault exactly where we hoped - Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo says he has no concerns about Renault's readiness for the new season despite seeing Red Bull's third day of testing cut short by a power unit change.
Ricciardo was back in the car for his second day of the Jerez test but after five laps Red Bull was forced to change the power unit in the RB11. The change prevented him from running again until the afternoon, when he managed to get his tally up to 48 laps before the end of the day.
Mercedes accumulated another huge tally of laps while two Ferrari-powered cars went quickest, but Ricciardo is undaunted by Red Bull's engine woes.
"I think we're at where we thought we would be by now," Ricciardo said when asked if he had any concerns about Renault. "Every lap we do we learn something, whether it's with the car or the driveability from Renault. Obviously the more laps we do the better, 48 laps is good for us - looking back to last year there's a lot of positives with that.
"I didn't expect more. I don't have much expectations, I just get in and drive and see what it is behind the wheel. We did a few more laps, we had the engine change early in the day which took some time away but in the afternoon we got a bit more done and I was happy to go 10-, 15-lap runs because that's where you get a bit more understanding. We took some things away."
Ricciardo says losing time in Jerez is not the worst thing with two tests still to come.
"We know there's still some steps for the Barcelona tests, there's still stuff to come. We didn't expect to have everything on the track this week so we're where we thought we would be for now but come the next two tests we want to be racking up more laps and I think we will be. Maybe by the third test we'll know where we are - it's still really early."
Though he finished in seventh headline times are of limited significance in testing and Ricciardo is happy from how his car felt after the power unit change.
"It's still early, it's still hard [to know the pecking order]. I'd like to know a bit more, we were limited today but I think we got to do in more long runs. It's in testing where you get to know the car a bit better and feel how it well it uses the tyres etc. I don't know about the pace, it's still hard with fuel loads and everything, but the consistency of putting a few laps together was good so there are positives to take away."
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