Monaco Grand Prix – Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo said that his race affecting problem was related to his MGU-K.
Ricciardo won the race in Monaco on Sunday, despite running slowly for the last 2/3 of the race. This was after an Energy Recovery System issue hit his Red Bull after his pitstop, with Ricciardo immediately caught and put under pressure from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
However, despite Red Bull warning him that his issue wouldn’t get any better, Ricciardo seemed to find his rhythm again and kept Vettel at arm’s length throughout. After the race, Ricciardo confirmed that it was an MGU-K problem, the part of the ERS that harnessses and deploys energy recovered from the kinetic energy of the car. This roughly translates to a power loss of around 180bhp, as Ricciardo explained: “It was an extreme loss of power, and I think this result shows off our great chassis. The circuit helped us here, due to the nature of it, but this shows it’s a really good chassis. There was times today I was really cruising, and the track here allows you to do that. There was a bit of luck involved there and, had we been running at normal pace, it probably would have been a two stopper.”
Asked how he had combatted the effects of the problems, he explained the different driving techniques he had to employ to ensure he didn’t break his car:
“The rear brakes got really hot. I moved the brake balance 6 or 7% forwards to control the temperatures, which is a lot – it’s usually only about 1 or 2%. This meant a lot of lifting and make sure the braking didn’t destroy the systems. Everything had to be done slowly, and it meant that we got it home.”
With the win allowing Ricciardo to close the points gap to championship leaders Lewis Hamilton & Sebastian Vettel, there’s an outside possibility that Red Bull Racing may yet be able to mount a title challenge, although Daniel admitted the team aren’t quite there yet: “They’ve still got a good buffer on me. I’m not going to change the way I’m driving or the way I’m attacking. The plan is to get some more podiums anyway. If we can get another win at another circuit before the summer break, maybe we can get an outside chance going.”
“Degradation looked really good for us today and our chassis is strong so we might be able to get another good one in Canada.”
