Tom Millard says Red Bull pairing Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat can find form in this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Spanish GP. Click here to bet.
Daniel Ricciardo can get the Red Bull into the points this weekend
4pts Daniel Ricciardo to finish in the top six
4pts Daniil Kvyat to finish in the points
Four grands prix into the season and we finally have a fourth driver to join the podium party.
Had he been given one more lap in Bahrain Kimi Raikkonen would have picked off Lewis Hamilton’s ailing Mercedes, whose brake-by-wire system became alarmingly less brake and more wire as the chequered flag approached.
Hamilton held on though, taking his third win from four races and opening up a 27-point lead over team-mate Nico Rosberg, with an uncharacteristically scrappy Sebastian Vettel now a further point back, 23 ahead of Raikkonen in the other Ferrari.
The early signs are ominous for the rest of the field to the extent that one bookie has priced up a market without the four front-runners, but the rest of the order at least might be given a shake-up in this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Aside from a brief hop across the Atlantic to Montreal in June the F1 circus doesn’t leave Europe from now until mid-September, so all the development parts that have been queuing up to be introduced to the cars can be bolted on, with a variable spread of results inevitable.
Rumours abound as to the scope and promise of the upgrades but it might be worth focusing on a team who have, to put it politely, plenty of improvement in them on the evidence shown so far.
Big-budget underperformers Red Bull have been keen to delegate responsibility for their embarrassing start to the season to engine partners Renault.
A couple of sixth-place finishes are more a reflection of lead driver Daniel Ricciardo’s adeptness in the cockpit than the RB11’s virtues; the toils of Daniil Kvyat in the sister car seem to be a better benchmark for where the former champions currently stand.
That could change over the next few races though, as Adrian Newey’s design team are ready to introduce a breathtakingly expensive new front wing onto the car in Barcelona this weekend.
If the new piece of kit can bring the best out of what is a typically well-designed chassis – and an apparent £3 million-worth of development cost suggests it can – Ricciardo could be troubling at least the Williams pair before long.
Kvyat, for his part, has come in for some harsh criticism after a wayward start to the season but the youngster has been dealt a tough hand with countless reliability issues and some racing incidents which were often unavoidable.
A pair of ninth places in the only two races where his car hasn’t ground to a halt wreathed in smoke isn’t a bad return and the pugnacious Russian should now start to be rewarded for his stoicism.
He’s odds-against for another points finish with bwin (5/6 is available at Coral), which has to be a fair price given the step forward his team are expecting to take in Catalonia.
Ricciardo is even longer at around the 11/8 or 7/5 mark to repeat the top-six finishes he wrung out of the car in Australia and Bahrain, and while he might need a helping hand from those ahead of him in the betting, the odds are fair.
The Australian’s car crossed the finish line in the last race shrouded in smoke after his third engine of the season detonated in spectacular style, and with only one allocated engine remaining to see him through to the end of the season grid penalties are a certainty.
But with a significantly upgraded car and a re-engineered Renault powertrain Ricciardo could take the battle to Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa behind the front four this weekend.
Friday’s practice sessions start at 0900 and 1300, Saturday’s at 1000. Qualifying is scheduled for 1300 on Saturday and the race for the same time on Sunday (all times BST).