Red Bull Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo had been hoping over the winter holidays that he would finally be the Australian Formula One driver to break the Albert park circuit and finally stand on at least the bottom rung of the podium, something no other Australian driver has done at the Albert Park track.
Even though his qualifying performance wasn’t good, after he crashed in the third and final qualifying session, meaning that he would have to start from at least tenth on the grid.
Then came the news that the Milton Keynes based squad needed to change the gearbox in his RB13, sending him back yet another 5 places.
Despite all of this, Daniel’s smile never left his face and he was just as eager to get out there and fight his way up in front of his home fans when the next disaster happened…his car became stuck in 6th gear on the warm up lap.
But that still didn’t stop him as his mechanics got the car running, only to have it give up for the last time on lap 28…
"A really frustrating start to the race with Daniel having a problem with what looks like a sensor on the gearbox stopping the car in sixth gear on the formation lap,” team boss Christian Horner said. ‘It was an unbelievable recovery from the mechanics to get him into the race, nobody gave up in working to get the car out there.”
“Then we were always going to be relying on safety cars to get back on to the lead lap. We decided to put the mileage in and get the knowledge anyway. Unfortunately on lap 28 he encountered another issue with a fuel cell that we need to look at to understand it fully. “
