ENGINE SWAP HAMPERS RICCIARDO

Daniel Ricciardo’s preparation for the Russian Grand Prix has been hampered after poor performance from his Mercedes powered McLaren necessitated an engine swap between practice sessions.

The Italian Grand Prix winner struggled in FP1 with a lack of power and was only able to set the 14th fastest time.

After missing the start of FP2 while McLaren completed the changeover, Ricciardo was able to get out on track but was caught up with traffic while the rest of the field completed heavy fuel runs and was unable to set a representative lap time.

“This morning, we struggled quite a bit to get comfortable and there wasn’t that much pace.” said the Australian.

“We made some changes with swapping the PU for FP2, but then we had a delay getting out, and then we had yellows, red flags and then people around us on high fuel.”

“It was a bit of a lost session really, so we have some homework tonight. Fortunately, Lando looked more comfortable and quicker in FP2, so we’ll try to learn from that.”

“For us, not the most inspiring day, but still a lot we can work on to improve ahead of qualifying.”

McLaren Executive Director Andrea Stella confirmed the issue for Ricciardo but is confident things will improve come qualifying.

“On Daniel’s side of the garage we had a little disruption, discovering an issue at the end of FP1.” said Stell.

“We swapped the PU over the break between P1 and P2, lost a little bit of running time and as a result were doing our new Soft run in P2 in difficult traffic conditions.”

“That’s reflected in the classification – but we know there’s quite a lot more to come.”

Rain is expected to mix things up in Sochi for Formula 1 qualifying which gets underway from 9:30pm (AEST) tonight.

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