It looks more like a two-horse 2018 Formula 1 championship fight between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, but Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen are not counting themselves out just yet.
The Mercedes driver sits on top with 145 points after eight races while Vettel is right behind on 131 – the only two to have more than 100 points against their names. Next best is, Red Bull Racing’s Ricciardo on 96.
The Australian leads Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas who is on 92 and Ferrari’s Raikkonen on 83 – only 13 separating the three as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is long way off in sixth with 68 to his name.
It is 62 points separating the Top 5 at the moment with 325 points to play for in the remaining races. Even though mathematically they are all in the battle, but it does indeed looks more like the Top 2 will get away with this.
However, Ricciardo and Raikkonen think otherwise for now. The Australian has stated earlier that he needs a win at least to stabalise ahead of the summer break – right now, he has four attempts remaining in that goal.
“I feel..I still feel we’re in it, to be honest,” he said. “For sure, we’re still a little bit a long way from it, if you know what I mean, from a points perspective. But I feel we’re more in it than we have been the last four years I’ve had with the team. Four? Five? Whatever!
“As I touched on earlier, we’re going to circuits that we didn’t think we’d be on the podium, and we’re getting a podium, or having the pace for it, so I know we’re still going to have to take a penalty in the next few races, and we’re still on the back foot in some areas – but I feel on performance alone, we’re closer than we ever have been.
“That’s still giving me a bit of hope and confidence. There’s still a long way to go. And obviously, the team’s pretty aggressive with updates. So all we need is a couple more to give us an extra bit here and there and we could probably start to creep back inside it.
“Like always, you get one win and all of a sudden it’s ‘you’re back in the fight, you’re back in the hunt’. If we got a win and the top guys had a bad weekend all of a sudden, we’re the talk of the town again. I think it’s still too early to count us out.”
Despite the obvious game of penalties to come, especially with the Renault power unit – it could also be for Mercedes or Ferrari but for now they look safe – Ricciardo remains optimistic. As he said, pace wise, they have looked in a much better position than before.
Meanwhile for Raikkonen, his two retirements could come back to haunt him especially the Bahrain one where a pit malfunction cost him a silly DNF, followed by the engine failure in Spain – adding insult to injury.
But regular podiums has kept him in the hunt. Still he desperately needs a win to his name this season to have any chance. “If you purely take the points, for sure. If you count how many points there are left, for sure, yes.
“But obviously we’ve got, not the ideal things happening in a couple of races where we didn’t finish, so that put us in a little bit trickier position – but apart from that, we’ve been pretty OK.
“So, we keep doing, and try to stay out of any issues and to put things solid, as well as we can. It’s going to be a long way still – but of course with the two small issues have not been ideal but it’s not a disaster,” he said.
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