Infiniti Red Bull Racing F1 Spa practices review 22.08.2014: BELGIAN GP – FRIDAY PRACTICE DANIEL RICCIARDO First Practice Session: Position: 9, Best Time: 1

BELGIAN GP – FRIDAY PRACTICE 



 
DANIEL RICCIARDO

First Practice Session: Position: 9, Best Time: 1:52.972, Laps: 19
Second Practice Session: Position: 8, Best Time: 1:50.977, Laps: 16


“I think we knew it would be difficult to break away from the mid field here - we see Force India, McLaren and Toro Rosso and a few of the others are strong. Hopefully tomorrow we can find a bit more speed and get ahead of them.


Our long run is better than our short run pace, so that's not bad, if we have a good race car then Sundays are always more fun.


If the track keeps rubbering in, and we'll see what the weather does tomorrow, then it should come a bit more into our hands. Eau rouge is still flat out, but you have to concentrate a bit more, it's not a Sunday drive through there anymore!”
 



SEBASTIAN VETTEL 

First Practice Session: Position: 11, Best Time: 1:53.369, Laps: 11
Second Practice Session: Position: - Best Time: -  Laps: 0


“Hopefully the engine we had a problem with today is not damaged, we have to check it properly. If it is then obviously we have to get another one out, not necessarily for this weekend but some weekends in the future so we'll have to wait and see.


Obviously I didn't drive much except for a few laps this morning. There's a lot of boxes to be ticked in general, and it's important around here to get your eye in, every year's different. It's a long lap, there's a lot of high speed corners and therefore it's important to have a rhythm, whereas at a slower track maybe it's a little bit easier.”
 


Ten seasons ago this month...


This season represents our 10th in F1. It’s been a decade of hard graft, but most of all it’s been 10 seasons of huge enjoyment. We decided to have a look all the way back to see exactly what some of our leading lights were doing this time 10 seasons ago…


Sebastian Vettel – On this weekend in 2005, 18-year-old Seb was basking in his best result (to that point) of his debut season in Formula 3 Euroseries. On 6/7 August at the Nürburgring Seb finished in second place in race two and took to the podium with current F1 rivals Lewis Hamilton (P1) and Adrian Sutil (P3). On August 27/28, Seb finished in P2 in both races at Zandvoort and a month later Seb would make his debut in an F1 car, for BMW. Seb eventually finished the ’05 F3 Euroseries in fifth place as the best rookie.


Daniel Ricciardo – 16-year-old Dan was in Year 11 at high school preparing for his first race in the Australian Formula Ford Championship. Dan had raced a number of events in the Western Australia championship but on September 11 he made his national championship debut at Sandown Park. He qualified 21st from 27 entrants, finished 17th in race one, failed to finish race two and was 16th in race three. Daniel was also busy winning the Intercontinental ‘A’ category of the CIK Australian Karting Championship.


Christian Horner – On this day in 2005 Christian was heading back home to the UK following the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix, which constituted round 14 of the 2005 championship. It wasn’t a bad outing in Istanbul either, with David Coulthard finishing seventh and Christian Klien eighth for our eighth points finish of the season and our third double points result of our opening campaign.


Adrian Newey – Was just a few months away from announcing that he would leave his then team of McLaren for a new challenge at Red Bull Racing. In August, however, Adrian was watching his McLaren MP4-20 being driven to victory in Turkey by Kimi Raikkonen.
 
 
 
 - Britta Roeske, photo Red Bull