Despite a disastrous 2015 season, Daniel Ricciardo praised the qualities of his Red Bull chassis, claiming the RB11 would have been good enough for a few wins towards the end of the year had it been powered by Mercedes.

Red Bull Racing’s season was marked by Renault’s inability to achieve a competitive level of either reliability or performance, an issue which left Ricciardo, a three-time victor in 2014, understandably frustrated.

The team saw a marked improvement in the latter part of the season however as Renault steadied its reliability woes while the Red Bull’s engineers also made headway with the RB 11.

“Since Hungary, the car not only performed better, but it was easier to set up,” Ricciardo explained, speaking to Autosport.

“It’s like 2014, it’s been in that window. We either found the window or the window just expanded. The signs were there at Silverstone, but Budapest was really where it turned.

“I’d honestly say from Budapest, if we had a Merc in the back we would’ve won a few races, to say the least.”

Ricciardo also attributed part of the team’s underperformance to ill-advised changes made to the RB11’s front nose following a rule change for 2015.

“When we did have the new nose/wing combination at Silverstone, that was when it started going better, that was a big one.

“I know they went through a lot of noses and we tried a lot of combinations. That was probably something that we didn’t get on top of as soon as we could’ve done.”