Ricciardo: “Red Bull risks engine penalties already from Monaco”

Daniel Ricciardo has said Red Bull hopes to safeguard its fourth engine to avoid a grid penalty as early as the Monaco GP. The Austrian team fitted Renault's fourth power unit to the Australian's car when a fluid leak was identified after first practice in Barcelona.

Ricciardo therefore completed just 4 laps towards the end of Free Practice 2 but confirmed that he would not have lapped much more even with the car possibly ready for the start of the session as Red Bull will look to save kilometers ahead of Monaco .

“We expected to run a little today,” said Ricciardo after free practice. “The main objective is to take this engine to the end of the Monaco weekend. That's the last place you want to get a penalty, so fingers crossed for this engine to last at least two weekends. We had to save kilometers so we wouldn't be doing many laps anyway. Unfortunately we have to be aware that we are already with the last engine of the season. It's not something we can ignore. We are doing what we can, and so we hope that at least this unit will last until after Monaco, so that we don't get a penalty on a street circuit. We have some updates here and have tried to test them. There's a lot of potential, I don't think it all worked on my car, it wasn't what we want it to be. It will get better, we just need to understand how to exploit the potential.

His teammate, Daniil Kvyat, finished Free Practice 2 fifth fastest: “We have analyzed how the updates work, so we hope to make the most of them tomorrow” declared the Russian. “We know there are some areas where we need to improve. When you have a new package the car changes a lot and it is always necessary to analyze it” he added, referring above all to the aerodynamic innovations, the most visible of which is obviously the shortened nose of the RB11.