Daniel Ricciardo believes Red Bull had a “pretty good day” compared to primary rival Ferrari during practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo finished third-quickest in second practice as the fastest non-Mercedes driver, as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas ran 1-2 in both 90-minute sessions at Interlagos.
Ricciardo will drop 10 places from wherever he qualifies due to taking on a fresh MGU-H, but expressed confidence with the performance of the RB13.
“It was a pretty good day actually, we did alright,” said Ricciardo.
“This morning we didn’t run full beans the whole way, we’ve got to get this engine all the way through to the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi.
“So we tried to be smart with our usage, but this afternoon obviously on the Supersofts we were able to run a normal setting.
“It looked really good, Mercedes are pretty quick on high fuel, we seemed to be quick on low fuel but I think they’ll have a bit more on low fuel tomorrow.
“But relative to Ferrari I think we had a pretty good day.”
Team-mate Max Verstappen finished fifth fastest, just 0.011s behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, and was also upbeat over the performance.
“We are not too far off, long runs on the Super Softs were quite okay but on the Soft Mercedes seems very quick.
“We know they are normally a bit harder on tyres so maybe that’s why the Soft for them works well but there’s still improvement to be made.”
