(Clement Marin - DPPI Renault Sport F1)
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has praised Daniel Ricciardo's performances since the Australian arrived at the reigning world champions to partner Sebastian Vettel at the start of this season. Ricciardo has hit the ground running with the team having out-qualified Vettel in the opening race of the season in Australia. He went on to finish the race on the podium in second place only to be disqualified following the race due to a fuel irregularity.
In Malaysia last weekend, Ricciardo drove really well but was penalized during the race for an unsafe release from his pit box and as he travelled down the pit-lane following his stop one of his wheel's was not mounted properly and as a result the team had to recovery his car and because of this the Australian was handed a ten place grid penalty for this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix as team mechanics are not permitted to run after a car when it stops in the pit-lane.
Ricciardo was forced to retire from the race after 49 laps. Despite the difficult start to the season his boss is impressed with the Australian saying:
'Daniel, I think, was fantastic today, he told Crash.net in an interview directly after the Malaysian Grand Prix.
He went on to say: 'To anybody that said he wasn't committed enough over the first lap or so, I think he proved any doubters wrong - he's an absolute racer. He got stuck in and made the pass on Alonso, he went around the outside of Seb and gave them both enough room to work with, and he nearly had a run at [Nico] Rosberg as well'.
The reigning world champions will head to Paris on April 14 for the hearing about Ricciaedo's appeal. If the appeal is successful the ramifications for Formula One could be huge. Red Bull confirmed that over the Malaysian Grand Prix they encountered more problems with their FIA fuel sensor and unlike in Australia the team worked with FIA to manage the issue.
©Ben Johnston 2014
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