MONZA, Italy -- Daniel Ricciardo says Red Bull has "a bit of work to do" to cut the gap to Ferrari before qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.
Red Bull finished a distant fifth and sixth in FP2 on Friday afternoon, with lead car Max Verstappen trailing the quickest Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel by nearly half a second. Ricciardo finished a further 0.3s down on his teammate and admits he did not expect to see such a big gap between the two teams.
"Position-wise we are more or less were we expected," Ricciardo said. "At least I expected Ferrari to be behind Mercedes here. But I didn't expect the gap to be as big as it was, so on soft tyres we were more competitive.
"But on the super-softs we didn't really find as much on one lap. If we can use this tyre a bit better in qualifying we can get close to Ferrari, but we have a bit of work to do to catch them. Anyway, I think fifth and sixth today is not too bad."
Every team struggled with the super-soft tyres at the Belgian Grand Prix and Ricciardo thinks that compound will be the key to race strategy once again.
"This track is less demanding even though it is high speed. There are fewer corners and the lap is shorter, so we will see a few more laps out of the super softs. I couldn't use mine in the long run, but Max did his and I think he did a fair old stint, so if that goes long enough then it could be a one stop race.