Image by Glenn Dunbar/LAT
Ricciardo needs new chassis after cracking tub
Daniel Ricciardo will take a new chassis on Saturday at the British Grand Prix after cracking his tub during Friday practice.
The Australian was forced to stop running during FP2 as a result of a power unit failure, limiting him to just 17 laps in total on Friday afternoon. After the session, Renault sporting director Alan Permane revealed Ricciardo had suffered a small crack in his chassis after running over a curb, requiring the change overnight.
Ricciardo was unconcerned by the power unit issue as the failure was on an older specification of internal combustion engine (ICE) that was always set to be replaced by the latest spec on Saturday.
“It was going OK, then in FP2 we struggled a bit more,” Ricciardo said. “I’m confident we will be all right tomorrow, but we had an issue at the end. Everything just switched off. We’re looking into it now.
“I missed out the long run but we seemed pretty good this morning, fell back this afternoon, but it is close, and we know that there is some lap time on the table in a few areas. So we will just try and clean it up tomorrow.
“It is RIP to that engine so we are going to have a little service tonight. It was called Pony, so we have to put Pony down, I think.
“That was the original spec, so it was definitely just a practice engine. It would have been nice to get it to do a few more Fridays. But the word for now is that we are going to say adios to it and put Pony down.”
Renault was ninth fastest of the 10 teams in terms of its fastest overall lap on Friday, but Ricciardo is confident that is not a true reflection of where it can be in qualifying.
“The time sheets don’t show too much optimism, but we are better than that. We still have work to do. There is some lap time on the table that we can get quite quickly. But to put us in the P7, P8 area we do need to find a little more. We are currently good enough to get inside the top 10 but just. We want to get a bit deeper in there.
“There are still a few things to discover on the car. I had a bit of an issue in the long run but other than that not a bad day. We won’t be up to midnight but we will do a bit of work tonight to get a bit more out of it. We split the setups for a little bit then got a bit closer in the afternoon. We are still a little bit different in some areas, so will just try and work out which direction to follow.”
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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