BARCELONA, Spain -- Red Bull has downplayed the two issues it suffered either side of lunch on the opening day of winter testing, saying engine supplier Renault was simply "playing it safe".
Daniel Ricciardo triggered the first red flag of 2017 when he stopped at Turn 4 in the first hour due to a sensor alarm on the crankshaft. The kept him in the garage until after lunch, and his day was hampered further in the afternoon when the team detected a battery problem.
Renault has come into the new season with a completely rebuilt V6 power unit after three years off the pace of the class-leading Mercedes outfit. Speaking after his first proper day in the car, Ricciardo brushed off suggestions the early issues hinted at deep-routed reliability issues with the Renault engine.
Asked if the stoppages worried him, he replied: "Not worried. It would have been nice to do more laps, this morning in particular. The main issue was that it was for safety measures, so we stopped running because of some sensor things and they are giving us warnings.
"So we are especially from the engine side playing it a bit safe. And making sure we don't do damage on day one. In the last two hours we got some good running, and hopefully that continues for the rest of the test, and hopefully Max [Verstappen] does 200 laps tomorrow!"
F1 test days are as much about quality as quantity when it comes to laps, especially in the early stages, and Ricciardo is happy with what the car did in the 44 he completed.
"We were grateful at the end to get the best part of two hours of clean running in the last part of te day. That was important for us and we racked up close to 50 laps in that last little block. We took a little bit away from that.
"From the first run I went out there and obviously, it was a new car so you start to feel a few little differences. We cleaned them up already in the few runs we had, so it is just going to come with more running. The last few hours gave us a lot of confidence going into tomorrow and we can definitely get the ball rolling from here."
The team launched its 2017 challenger -- the RB13 -- by playing on the superstition linked to that number, unveiling it with a teaser video saying it was "unlucky... for some". Horner thinks luck went against his team on Monday.
"I'd far rather have the problems here than at the first race and I think the good news is they don't appear to be major problems," he said. "Also an encouraging fact is both other cars powered by the same power unit are running reasonably OK, so one can only assume hopefully it's just been unlucky that Daniel has had two issues on his car today and hopefully we'll get out and get into some proper running a bit later on."