Ricciardo testing "curiosity" spiked by F1's new era

McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo is "the most excited" for winter testing for years and has revealed his "curiosity" over rival's solutions to F1's new era or car.

The sport has introduced significantly different machinery in an attempt to boost overtaking and the overall racing product offered on track across the coming years.

Teams hit the track for the first time officially in the pre-season session held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Wednesday, fully unveiling their cars to the world and losing the smoke and mirrors utilised in some launches.

For drivers, the prospect of logging hundreds of miles for their engineers can seem a mundane task in relation to the racing action they will sink their teeth into at the end of March, but Ricciardo confirmed that with the raft of changes this year, testing "is exciting".

"The more years you do, the less excited you are to test and the more excited you are to go racing," said the Australian.

"It is definitely the most excited I have been in a while to go winter testing.

"The curiosity to see what direction teams have gone and just visually, the cars look really cool.

"Just the whole stance of them this year as well. We saw, for a long time, high rear ride heights and this sort of stuff.

"It all seems to be a different way for this year. Even seeing the different philosophies around that is cool.

"Even stuff like renders compared to real, it is quite exciting to see the cars on track and how they actually look for the first."

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