Ricciardo runs Mercedes close but suspects they have hidden pace

Daniel Ricciardo was not getting carried away by his performance after lapping within two tenths of a second of the Mercedes drivers on Friday in Austin.

The Red Bull driver suspects Mercedes will pull further ahead on Saturday as they have done on several occasions this year.

“If we’ve got the pace we had today against the Mercedes on Sunday then it’s going to be a fun race,” the Malaysian Grand Prix winner told reporters at the track.

“I think we will have some overtaking ahead of us. I’m not sure where they are with engines and all that, how conservative they’re running but today we look good.”

Ricciardo managed to split the two Mercedes drivers in his qualifying simulation run. “The low fuel pace, I think it was OK,” he said. “I mean it looks good on the time sheets, I think we can still find a bit more but I’m sure Mercedes will probably have a bit more.”

“But looking at where Ferrari were, it was a solid day. Our long run pace, we’re happy with that and felt like we got some good consistent laps out of it and were able to chip away the whole day. We made progress from P1 and pretty happy with where we’re ended up. Hopefully not too much on tonight, a little bit of fine-tuning and that’ll be it.”

Hamilton was one of few drivers who did not improve his lap time in the warmer afternoon session, suggesting his Mercedes has further performance locked away. He spent the second part of his race simulation on medium compound tyres on which he complained of a vibration. But on his longer run on the super-soft tyres he showed similar pace to Ricciardo late in the stint (see graph below).

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Ferrari had a less promising day, finishing over eight tenths of a second behind Mercedes. A repeat of their Suzuka qualifying performance, where they beat both Red Bulls, seems unlikely. Sebastian Vettel also collected his first reprimand of the season after passing the pit entry bollard on the wrong side.

McLaren placed inside the top ten on Friday but can expect Williams to be stronger on Saturday as usual. Nonetheless the fight for the final Q3 places should be fierce: Jenson Button in eighth to Felipe Massa eight places back were covered by half a second.

Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

Complete practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2	Total laps
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’37.743	1’37.358	60
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’37.428	1’37.649	57
3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’39.963	1’37.552	59
4	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’39.988	1’38.178	50
5	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’39.379	1’38.258	55
6	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’39.712	1’38.508	59
7	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes		1’38.568	31
8	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda	1’41.663	1’38.713	50
9	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda	1’40.362	1’38.801	56
10	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’39.407	1’38.865	52
11	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’40.140	1’38.971	57
12	Kevin Magnussen	Renault	1’41.942	1’39.159	45
13	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	1’40.287	1’39.189	44
14	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1’39.776	1’39.197	64
15	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’40.131	1’39.202	52
16	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1’40.191	1’39.281	57
17	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1’42.332	1’39.455	65
18	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’40.826	1’39.554	39
19	Esteban Ocon	Manor-Mercedes	1’43.874	1’40.086	54
20	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas-Ferrari	1’40.970	1’40.114	41
21	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1’41.170	1’40.219	45
22	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor-Mercedes		1’41.131	31
23	Alfonso Celis	Force India-Mercedes	1’41.422		27
24	Jordan King	Manor-Mercedes	1’42.012		29

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