Daniel Ricciardo believes the Silverstone track boosts his chances of extending his career-best streak to six straight podium finishes at Sunday’s British Grand Prix.
With his Red Bull team reportedly bringing more car upgrades to England ahead of a major change for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Ricciardo was feeling positive.
“It’s never a given but I definitely feel we should be in with a shot on a track that suits us,” the 28-year-old Australian told AAP.
“It’s a high-speed circuit with a lot of fast corners and aerodynamically our car is getting really good now.
“And that’s really motivating for us.”
Ricciardo’s run of podiums started at the Spanish Grand Prix in May and has continued through Monaco, Canada, Azerbaijan, where he won, and Austria, putting him fourth in the driver standings on 107 points behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel (171) and Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton (151) and Valteri Bottas (136).
He is excited to see how the faster 2017 F1 cars handle going flat-out through some of those fast corners at Silverstone.
“It’s going to be fun. I love high-speed corners,” he said.
“From turn nine to 15, Copse to Stowe, it’s some of the coolest sequences… probably (the best) mile of race track we go on all year.
“We got a taste of it in Austria. The second, third sector we were carrying some serious speed, so it’s a sign of what this weekend is going to be like I think.”
Fast corners are fun for Ricciardo but moreso in an increasingly competitive car and he feels the new Red Bull upgrades are coming at the right time.
“We’ve got more coming later,” Ricciardo said of the new changes before adding “but yeah, it’s a high downforce package.”
That high level of downforce will be crucial at Silverstone and then in Budapest where it is expected to be fully unleashed.
And if the car improves further from Austria, where Ricciardo finished just six seconds behind the winning Mercedes of Bottas and held off Hamilton, then he has even greater reason to flash his famous smile.
“We’re definitely closer now (to Ferrari and Mercedes) and there are some circuits that will suit us more than others,” he said.
“I think Silverstone will be similar to Austria, in that if we have a perfect weekend we can have a chance for a podium and then we come to some more high downforce circuits.
“We have Budpaest in a couple of weeks which is more car-dependent than engine-dependent and we should be really on pace and the car will set up to get to a level of Ferrari and Mercedes.”
