Ricciardo expecting six-way battle for pole in Mexico

Daniel Ricciardo has suggested that it could be a six-way battle for pole position during Saturday's qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix, with each driver from Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes in with a shout of taking P1 ahead on Sunday's race.

Red Bull were in good form in the practice sessions on Friday, with Max Verstappen finishing 1.5 seconds faster than Lewis Hamilton, while Ricciardo recorded the second-best time at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

However, Ricciardo does not expect the dominance to continue, saying he believes Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Kimi Raikkonen, and Sebastian Vettel will all improve in qualifying.

"If it stays like this, then yeah, it's between us two, but I don't want to be naïve,'' Ricciardo said when asked if the practice sessions suggested it would be a fight between him and Verstappen for pole.

"I'm sure Ferrari and Mercedes will come on strong tomorrow. We'll see what happens. I hope they don't. it could be a close six-way fight for pole. I think that would be pretty exciting."

Buckle up for FP2 at the #MexicoGP ???????????? #F1 pic.twitter.com/tSrUIHRIHS — Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) October 26, 2018

Despite enjoying the second-quickest lap in practice, Ricciardo admits that some work still needs to be done on the high-fuel aspect of the drive coming up at the weekend.

"I was happy with the low-fuel performance, it was much closer to the pace,'' the Australian added.

"The high fuel we seemed off the pace. I could feel the car wasn't quite there but we were still more off the pace than we probably though. We'll work on the high fuel, but the low fuel for now doesn't seem too bad.'

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