SILVERSTONE, U.K. — Daniel Ricciardo has still not given up on challenging for the 2018 title but admits Red Bull’s up and down season makes it difficult to believe it is possible.
Ricciardo’s teammate Max Verstappen claimed a surprise win at the Austrian Grand Prix last week. Although it was helped by a grid penalty for Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes’ double retirement, Verstappen and Red Bull showed an unexpected step forward in pace during the race.
Ricciardo has claimed two wins this year but after his retirement in Austria he has dropped to fourth in the standings, 50 points behind championship leader Sebastian Vettel, three ahead of Verstappen. Despite the team’s opportunistic victories, it has also left points on the table on numerous occasions — team boss Christian Horner believes the team would be leading the championship if it had claimed the results it deserved this year.
When asked if he thinks Red Bull can stay in the title fight on current form, Ricciardo said: “I think we will win again this year.
“We have a chance to win on some tracks, and some opportunities will arise, but I still don’t think we have the real pace every weekend to convince ourselves that we can be there. Max and me are taking too many points away from each other.
“Lewis and Seb are doing all the winning there. But, we are good enough to win more races, I still think we need to find a little bit to be there on more tracks. But we never showed signs of speed in Austria from Friday until Sunday. And sure Mercedes had their problems, but even so we thought on pace Ferrari should have made it easy on us from everything we’d seen. And it wasn’t really the case.
“So it is still unknown which makes it exciting. Hopefully the ones we expect to be quick on we are. If we come fifth and sixth in Budapest we are probably going to be pretty pissed off!”
Given the fact Red Bull is still not on a par with Mercedes and Ferrari on engine power, Ricciardo believes it is imperative the team cuts out the reliability issues.
“We are doing pretty well considering we’ve only finished six out of nine. So we are doing all right. But doing all right is not enough to be there. Especially because we are not dominating every race. We need to finish more.
“Two were technical and one was the incident with Max [in Baku]. We have to try and finish more. I’m very likely going to have a penalty in Germany, so the odds are against us but I still don’t think it is impossible. Still too long to go to say it is out [of the question].”