Daniel Ricciardo did not have an easy time of it in his F1 debut at Silverstone. The conditions were tricky for all the drivers, but especially for one who was racing in the full glare of public attention for the first time. But what was really interesting about his race for me was learning that there is an art to backmarkerdom, which drivers in that position must learn. Basically if you drive a Hispania or one of the slower cars, you are going to be lapped several times by the leader during a race and by plenty of other cars More…

Just before the weekend Hispania Racing Team (HRT) confirmed that Australian Daniel Ricciardo will race for the team starting at Silverstone, in place of Narain Kartikeyan. HRT is around four seconds a lap off the pace in qualifying this season, an improvement of a second and a half over last season. In Canada Tonio Liuzzi qualified a tenth of a second faster than Timo Glock, but in Valencia the gap was a second and in Barcelona it was half a second. The 22 year old Red Bull sponsored driver has been doing the Toro Rosso Friday testing duties, bit it More…

Fresh from his impressive test performance at Yas Marina Circuit last week, Red Bull protege Daniel Ricciardo has been given a testing role with Toro Rosso, which will see him running in Friday practice at all 20 rounds of next year’s F1 world championship. This is a logical but nevertheless interesting move by the Red Bull management. First it sends out a signal that the Red Bull conveyor belt of talent is in full swing, having just produced its first world champion in Sebastian Vettel. Second it justifies the existence of Toro Rosso as it is the proving ground of More…

Australian Daniel Ricciardo dominated the second day of the Young Guns test at Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi today, closing out with a time comparable with Sebastian Vettel’s pole lap from last weekend, once track condition is taken into account. Ricciardo set a time of 1m 38.102s, which was 1.292 seconds faster than the pole lap last weekend. Engineers I’ve spoken to at the track say that the track improvement was around 1.2 seconds yesterday, compared to qualifying day, and it was even faster this morning. There was more grip and there was also a favourable tailwind. Also cones which More…

Daniel Ricciardo, the Red Bull reserve driver, set the fastest time on the first day of the Young Guns test at Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi. The 21 year old Australian set a fastest time of 1m 39.616s, which compares very favourably with the pole time for last weekend’s Grand Prix, set by Sebastian Vettel in the same car at 1m39.394s. Mark Webber’s qualifying time was 1m39.925s. It has to be observed that the comparison of times with last weekend is slightly misleading as the track has ramped up significantly since qualifying with all the rubber that has gone down. More…

Australian Daniel Ricciardo did his reputation in F1 circles no harm at all with a stunning lap time in the final day of the Jerez test for young drivers. At the wheel of the Red Bull, the 20 year old Australian, who won the British F3 championship, clocked a time of 1m 17.418s, the fastest time of the week. It was set on low fuel and new tyres, but it is still a quick time to add to the impressive runs he had put in during high fuel running. Engineers from other teams had their eye on him from day More…