Daniel Ricciardo believes he has three races to prove he is worthy of stepping into the sizeable shoes of fellow Australian Mark Webber at Red Bull.
Kimi Raikkonen is currently favourite to replace Webber after the 36-year-old announced he would be quitting Formula One at the end of this year.
However, if Red Bull remained loyal to its junior program, either Ricciardo or Toro Rosso team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne would be promoted to partner reigning triple world champion Sebastian Vettel from next season.
Ricciardo, however, knows Vergne currently has the edge given the Frenchman has scored strong points in the last two races in Monaco and Canada, finishing eighth and a career-high sixth respectively.
With three races to go before the summer break, starting on Sunday with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone before events in Germany and Hungary, Ricciardo appreciates he has to raise his game.
“Unfortunately I’ve had a pretty poor run the past two races, which is a concern, with my priority now to get some results on the board,” said Ricciardo.
The good news is he went out later Friday to top the times in a rain-shortened opening free practice for Sunday’s race.
Standing water and the dangers of aqua-planing meant only 10 drivers
ventured out to clock times with Ricciardo demonstrating courage and
competence in the appalling conditions.
He was fastest with a best lap of 1min 54.279sec ahead of nearest rival
German Nico Hulkenberg of Sauber by 0.794sec.
Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado was third in a Williams, 1.1sec adrift and
local favourite 2008 winner Briton Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes fourth 1.2sec
slower than Ricciardo.
Most of the leading drivers including defending triple world champion
German Sebastian Vettel and Webber, Ferrari’s two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso and the 2009 champion Briton Jenson Button of McLaren chose not to enter the fray.
As for promotion, Ricciardo is aware Raikkonen is in pole position, although he feels Red Bull should give one of their youngsters a chance.
“Ideally, in a perfect world, they’d love for one of us juniors to go through and to do what Seb did. That’s the philosophy of the program,” added Ricciardo, who is 24 on Monday.
“They would love for one of us to shine, to put together a string of awesome races, something that’s really going to turn heads, something that’s going to make it really easy for them.
“If they end up choosing someone like Kimi, okay, he’s experienced, a world champion in a world champion team, so you can’t argue with something like that if that’s the way they end up going.”
