As the teams leave the desert of Bahrain, that is the first Eastern Hemisphere section of the season over with. The season takes a three week break before heading into the European section, with the first race in Barcelona. After four races, the script of the season is taking shape. Mercedes are still the team to beat, but Ferrari are catching and challenging them. McLaren have had an awful start, but their car is quickly developing and getting better race by race. Renault seem to have fallen even further behind the leaders, and because of this, Red Bull are suffering one of their worst starts to a season. Not only is the form of the Red Bull and Renault alarming, so is that of Daniil Kyvat. This article will look at what reasons for why is Daniil Kyvat off form, and the consequences if it continues.
The season didn’t start well for Kyvat, when he failed to complete the out lap, and couldn’t start the race. In Malaysia, after a spin with Nico Hulkenburg, he recovered to score his first points for Red Bull, finishing in ninth place. In China, he was involved in a battle with his team-mate, that angered the team, as they were on difference strategies, and impeded Daniel Ricciardo’s race. On Lap 15, his engine blew up, and he had to retire. In Bahrain, he was able to battle from 18th on the grid to another ninth place. In contrast to Kyvat’s mixed fortunes, his team-mate has finished in the points in all four races, and leads the Russian by 19 points to four. Kyvat has also been out-qualified in all four outings, and as only ended in the final part of qualifying once, whilst Ricciardo has been in Q3 on all four occasions.
Why is there such a big gap between the two? First is luck. Whilst Riccardio hasn’t gone without his own problems, he has been able to complete each race, whilst Kyvat has been forced to retire from two of them. Also in qualifying, Kyvat has had less luck, as in Bahrain, he had car problems failing to get him out of Q1. Second is the expectation he is now under at the bigger team in Red Bull. At Toro Rosso, anything he achieved was deemed a positive, as he was at a lower team in his rookie season. He is now in his second season, and the honeymoon of been a rookie has gone. Critics expect to see an increased level of performance, and even though the car and engine is poor, he doesn’t seem to have increased his potential over the winter. Third is that his team-mate is Daniel Ricciardo. The man who has a years experience at Red Bull. The man who has 47 more races under his belt. The man who humbled a four-time world champion last season. Your team-mate is who you are based on in how good you are, and in Ricciardo, it is a tough team-mate to be compared to.
Fourth reason, and most worryingly, is the question is Kyvat really that good? Sebastian Vettel shocked Red Bull and the world last October by announcing he was leaving for Ferrari. Red Bull have always promoted from within, and the two choices for Vettel’s seat was the Toro Rosso pair of Kyvat and Jean-Eric Vergne. Vergne had just been dropped by Toro Rosso for 17 year old Max Verstappen, and maybe it didn’t seem logical thing to promote a driver to the top team just after dropping them from the feeder one. Because of this mentality, and the suddenness of Vettel’s announcement, it seemed that they may have promoted Kyvat in a panic reaction. It did seem a strange one, as Kyvat’s form after China last year wasn’t very good. In the first four races, he scored in three of them, and came 11th in the other. After that, he only scored on two other occasions, both ninth places, in Silverstone and Spa. In those 15 races, Verne scored on six occasions, and out-scored him 22 points to eight throughout the entire season.
With no quick fix for Renault and Red Bull, Kyvat will have to hope his luck begins to change, and that he can show he can at least compete with his team-mate, otherwise, as Red Bull have shown in the past, and with the emergence of the rookie pairing at Toro Rosso in Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr, he may find himself searching for a new team.
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