RB team principal Laurent Mekies has been seeing clear improvements from Daniel Ricciardo over the past two races despite another frustrating outing for the Australian in the Japanese Grand Prix.
Ricciardo has yet to score a point this season and retired on the opening lap of the race at Suzuka when he was involved in a collision with Alex Albon. Yuki Tsunoda qualified 10th and scored the final point at his home race, but the fact Ricciardo had been one place behind his teammate and also showed strong performance over a race distance in Australia is giving Mekies (pictured at left, above, with Ricciardo) confidence.
“Things are improving with Daniel a lot, already from Australia,” Mekies told SpeedCity Broadcasting. “Even though he did a race from the back — a very frustrating race from the back — but we’ve seen on his pace that the pace was there, so it gave us great confidence. [In qualifying] he was obviously right there as well for the top 10 together with Yuki, so it is a positive.
“Of course no driver wants to lose time in the car, and we know that every second counts and matters … but I’m sure he will be 100% in China. These sort of things happen. He has been around long enough to know that what matters is the speed, and he has the speed.”
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Television cameras regularly cut to reserve driver Liam Lawson after action involving Ricciardo at Suzuka, but Mekies doesn’t believe the presence of Lawson is having a negative impact on the race drivers.
“There is always pressure, at this level, for an F1 driver,” he said. “The whole field is the same up and down the grid — there will be huge pressure. It doesn’t matter so much if the reserve driver is here or not. We have a very good reserve driver with Liam — he has shown last year how impressively he could step in — but I really don’t think it’s adding any pressure on the guys.
“The highest pressure is the one they put on themselves to perform at the highest level at all times, and that’s probably what is driving them most.”