Bahrain II, Day 1: Red Bull Racing test report

F1’s final pre-season test ahead of the 2014 season got underway at the Bahrain International Circuit today, with Daniel Ricciardo back at the wheel of the RB10. After a productive morning in which he logged 32 laps, the afternoon session was more difficult, leading to the team spending most of the second period in the garage. Daniel did, however, return to the track to post a further seven laps just before the end of running.

“The morning was much better for us with a few longer runs,” said Daniel afterwards. “Behind the wheel, that’s the best I’ve felt so far. The package seems to be coming together better. We still had a few issues today, but at least when the car was on track it was much more useful running and we made progress in the morning. It’s getting there. I’d love to keep going, but at least Seb has two days after me in the car, so I think we’ll be looking pretty good for the next three days.”

Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum added: “We started really well this morning and put in some very useful laps straight away, which was good. We were able to run consistently and without issue and the plan was to increase the duration of the runs incrementally. That was all going according to plan. We sent Daniel out for a long-ish run, but we had to abort about five laps in, as we noticed some issues on the sensors. We brought him in, had a look at the car and discovered that we had a problem with the exhaust. So we had a long afternoon in the garage, but we did manage to get Daniel back out at the end of the session, which was good. We have some work to do overnight but hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to run in a similar style to this morning.”