Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo hopes that his team can kick off the new F1-campaign with a strong start, in order to "make a statement."
The Aussie thinks pre-season was successful, all things considered.
"The testing went pretty good," Ricciardo told Motorsport.com.
"We were able to do a lot of laps this year, even though the weather was really frustrating at times in the first week."
"The second week was really productive though, so we did manage to get a lot of things done in the end."
Ricciardo thinks that the 'Big Three' will still be the three top teams this year and that there won't be that many differences in terms of the pecking order.
"I think that Mercedes, Ferrari and us will still form the top three, but I do think that we'll be closer to each other this year."
"Mercedes will be the team to beat this weekend, but hopefully they won't be too far ahead of us."
The Honey Badger also thinks that getting off on the right foot could prove to be massively important for him and his team.
"It would be huge," Ricciardo admitted with a smile on his face.
"For me personally it would be amazing since it's my home country, but it would be massive for the team too."
"It would be a rude awakening for the other teams if they weren't awake already."
"A strong weekend for us would be a statement to the rest; we'd show that we're here to fight for the championship."
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