Daniel Ricciardo is not yet committing to the increasingly crisis-struck Red Bull beyond 2015.<\/p>\n
In Barcelona, rumours that the troubled former champion team’s Australian lead driver had signed a new deal for 2016 and beyond did the rounds.<\/p>\n
“We’re talking about it,” Ricciardo is quoted by Sky Italia, “but it depends on how things go this year.<\/p>\n
“For sure myself and also the team are not here to fight for seventh place,” the 25-year-old said in Spain after another disappointing race.<\/p>\n
Ricciardo, the only non-Mercedes driver to have won races last year, continued: “We will have to see what happens over the next few months and work hard to make sure we have better performance.”<\/p>\n
After former team driver Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull won every title on offer between 2010 and 2013, Red Bull is now in a deep trough.<\/p>\n
Team boss Christian Horner on Sunday admitted 2015 is already “pretty much a write-off”.<\/p>\n
Much of the blame is being pinned on struggling engine partner Renault, who turned down the performance of its ‘power units’ in Spain to prevent another embarrassing spat of blow-ups.<\/p>\n
But Horner urged the French marque to simply “go for it”.<\/p>\n
“Even if you end up using 20 engines,” he said, “it is far easier to make a fast engine reliable than a reliable car fast.”<\/p>\n
But team official Dr Helmut Marko said that even if Renault does take that approach, Red Bull is unlikely to be even close to a podium finish until “Maybe the last three races”.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the Austrian also told Kleine Zeitung newspaper that even though a major bodywork package “did not work on the track as it did in the simulator”, Red Bull’s drivers were also on the back foot in Spain.<\/p>\n
“Our established guys need to look out,” said Marko, referring to the Red Bull duo of Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat.<\/p>\n
“Paradoxically, the more inexperienced ones did the better job.”<\/p>\n
He is referring not only to the 17-year-old teen sensation Max Verstappen, but his rookie Toro Rosso teammate Carlos Sainz jr, who qualified an impressive fifth on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“The two of them are something extraordinary,” said Marko.<\/p>\n
“I fought hard for Sainz.\u00a0 He did not have a lot of friends or supporters, but I’m used to that,” he added.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Daniel Ricciardo is not yet committing to the increasingly crisis-struck Red Bull beyond 2015. In Barcelona, rumours that the troubled former champion team’s Australian lead driver had signed a new deal for 2016 and beyond did the rounds. “We’re talking about it,” Ricciardo is quoted by Sky Italia, “but it depends on how things go …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[3558,128,1096,1628,5262,5340,129],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29214,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29213\/revisions\/29214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}