Daniel Ricciardo thinks that he is likely to suffer an engine penalty later on in the season, as the Aussie doesn't think his RB14 can survive the 21 races on just the three Renault power units this season.
Both Red Bull's faced engine penalties last season, as four engines weren't enough for Verstappen and Ricciardo. All the other Renault and Honda-powered cars also got penalized multiple times, as those engines, in particular, struggled to stay on the track. This season, the rules were tightened, to the discontent of many drivers.
Ricciardo doesn't 100% think that he'll be facing similar penalties by the end of the season, but he thinks it's likely to happen.
"Last year I already had a couple of penalties and we've got one less engine this year," the Aussie explained.
"I don't want to say it's definite, but it's obviously likely that we'll encounter something like that again."
“I think we’ll stay optimistic and try to get these three home to Abu Dhabi.”
It's obviously different if you're a team that's cutting losses or a team that's really going for it. Last season, Red Bull were already out of contention, and therefore just conceded their penalties. If you're really contending, you might push your power-units to their limits and squeeze some more performance out of them. Could that be the case for Red Bull this year?
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