Daniel Ricciardo returned to driving duties on Wednesday after relinquishing them on Tuesday due to illness, and put his RB14 at the top of the time sheets at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, although he was slightly disappointed not to have beaten the unofficial lap record by even more than he did.
The Aston Martin Red Bull Racing driver completed an impressive one hundred and sixty-five laps on Wednesday, and his fastest lap of 1:18.047s was quicker than the previous best lap of the track set by Felipe Massa back in 2008, although he was sure he could have gone below the seventy-eight second mark.
Ricciardo feels the team are heading in the right direction when it comes to performance, and the Australian will have just one more test day in the car before he attacks his home Grand Prix at the end of the month.
“It was a good day today. I survived!” said Ricciardo. “Today’s was an optimistic run plan and I didn’t think we’d get that much done but we got through all of it, so that was good.
“I think I’ll sleep well tonight! It was a good bunch of laps today and I got a few quick ones in there, which was nice. The hypersoft tyre helped of course but we made some changes early this morning and after some medium runs then we went to the softer tyres and the changes we made seemed to help the car so there was just a bit more confidence and the track was a good temperature today so we could start to get some real testing in.
“It was OK; I would have liked to get into the 17s, but we’ll save that for the racing. In terms of the shape we’re in, I think we’re getting there, we’re in a decent place.”
