Daniel Ricciardo has traded in his old set of wheels for a new F1 car that is dubbed “RB13,” which he hopes will give him the power he needs in order to contend with the Team Mercedes cars, which enjoyed a considerable horsepower advantage last season, meaning that on any of the F1 courses where speed was an advantage, Riccardo’s tactic was to trail as closely as possible and hope for some sort of misfortune to befall Mercedes.
Ricciardo will test the new car in Spain. Team honcho Christian Horner describes the new car as the best looking the team has produced, but for out money, the new paint scheme is not nearly so flattering as the one from last year.
The car will have a new and improved Renault engine, which they claim will give the car a lap time improvement of three tenths of a second, which should help, but given that Ricciardo was often behind Mercedes’ lap times by half a second, the Team Red Bull engineers will need to get creative in order to wring every last possible bit of speed from the new car.
Ricciardo will take the new wheels for a test drive at Spain’s Circuit de Catalunya, where he hopes to gain familiarity with the more powerful engine and the modifications F1 established during the offseason.
