F1: Ricciardo wants to make title fight exciting

Daniel Ricciardo wants to make the Formula 1 title showdown between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in Abu Dhabi "even more exciting" on Sunday.

The Australian and his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen will start the race on the harder super-soft tire, while the other leading cars will be on ultra-softs based on the compounds each driver chose to set their fastest times with in Q2.

While Ricciardo then took third behind the Mercedes drivers in Q3, Verstappen made a mistake on both of his laps and will line up sixth.

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Explaining the reason for the different strategy, Ricciardo said at the post-qualifying press conference: "We have got to try something. It seems to be a bit of a trend this year, if we're in a position to qualify on another tire [in Q2] we try and see if it gives us an opportunity.

"Hopefully it puts us in the fight. There is a title on the line for these guys here [gesturing to the Mercedes drivers] hopefully it's fun throughout the pack and we can do something to make it even more exciting than it already is.

"As predicted Mercedes pulled a bit more than us in qualifying but we'll see if the race comes back for us. That is why we wanted to try something different with the super-softs – it might give us a bit more range at the start [before first pit stops] and put us more in the race towards the end.

"Yesterday we were strong on long runs, it looks good, so it's going to be fun tomorrow."

While Ricciardo is optimistic about his chances from the second row, Verstappen (pictured above) believes Mercedes will be too fast for anyone to interfere with Hamilton and Rosberg at the front.

"I don't think so – they are too quick," he said when asked about fighting Mercedes.

"We both felt pretty comfortable on the super-soft, so hopefully in the first stint I can go a bit longer together with Daniel and we'll see what happens."

Verstappen blamed his disappointing qualifying performance on struggling with Turn 11, at the end of the second backstraight.

"Q1 and Q2 was very good, no issues, then in Q3, I locked the fronts into Turn 11 on my first run," he said. "In my second run I was again two tenths up, and if I just do a decent Turn 11, another two tenths. But then I had a massive lock-up on the outside wheel, so I went even wider. I could have been easily P3, so that was a shame."

Originally on Autosport.com