Ricciardo starts real F1 career
JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA, Spain, Feb 6 PA – Daniel Ricciardo now sees himself in a race with Toro Rosso team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne to be Formula One world champion.
On a busy day of car reveals, the duo unveiled the STR7 at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain on Monday, following on from Sauber in the morning and Red Bull’s online launch early afternoon.
The Australian at least has 11 races under his belt after a stint on loan to Hispania Racing at the end of last season.
Frenchman Vergne faces his rookie campaign after the team opted to axe Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari.
In effect, Ricciardo and Vergne are reunited after joining Red Bull’s junior driver development program on the same day four years ago.
“That’s the first job done, and I guess we both want to be world champion, so it will be a race to get to that target as well,” the West Australian said.
“Each year in our career we have gone a step forward, and this is definitely a pretty obvious and big step towards hopefully the big one one day.”
Ricciardo feels he at least has a slight edge given the invaluable experience gained with Hispania, even if it was at the back of the grid.
“I learned a lot and I believe I improved a lot during that time.
“It’s a bit of a head start, that’s obvious. But we both have quite a bit of testing now before the season begins, so he’ll be able to catch up a little bit.”
The STR7 is the third car to be designed and built by the team since they made the break away from being Red Bull’s ‘sister’ marque.
In the past two years there has been improvement, with Toro Rosso ninth in 2010 and eighth last year, so further progression is an obvious requirement this year.
That, hopefully, begins with four days of testing this week.
Publisher: AAPNewswire
07 Feb 9:57 AM
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