Joining Red Bull in 2014 as the Woking outfit was trailing off its world championship highs, Ricciardo has made the most of his opportunities. In his three years, in a sometimes underpowered car, he has finished a creditable third in the championship in his debut year, eighth in 2015 and third again last season.

Coming into this year Ricciardo was confident the new regulations would play to Red Bull's aerodynamic strengths and engine upgrades as the year progressed would provide the power needed to ensure a fast finish. Cue the tweaks, he needs them now.

Ricciardo had a strong Bahrain Grand Prix at the weekend, but what became apparent in his last stint on soft tyres was that Red Bull has much work to do to match the still speedy Mercedes and the out-of-the-box improvement of Ferrari.

Sebastian Vettel's bright start to the season in Melbourne and Bahrain has put a fire in the Scuderia and for now Red Bull looks to be pushing for podiums not wins as the red and silver cars battle it out for supremacy.

Mind you no one seems to have told Ricciardo, who maintained after the race that a top step was in reach at Bahrain, despite being passed on the opening lap by his feisty teammate Max Verstappen.

"For me it was a race of two halves really. At the beginning of the race I genuinely thought we had a chance to win," he said in the aftermath of a disappointing fifth.

"They were sliding and looked like they were struggling more. It was quite easy for me to stay there and I was looking after my tyres, so at that point I was thinking it could be on today, not only for a podium but for a win."

With Verstappen crashing out after a brake failure and despite some Lewis Hamilton go-slow shenanigans in pit lane Ricciardo said he thought a good result was there for the taking until the soft tyres went on.

"The safety car worked for me in that we jumped up to third but it wasn't so good for our tyres and that's where we lost a lot of ground. Even once we settled into a pace and the chaos settled we fell back and I was struggling with grip at the front and rear. We never really got that tyre working for us today."

Red Bull boss Christian Horner agreed. "It became very quickly apparent that Daniel struggled to warm up the soft tyre compared to our competitors and dropped several places ... with the final stint on the supersoft tyre unfortunately fifth place was the best that we could achieve today."

Which leaves Ricciardo still behind the Mercedes, Ferarris and his teammate in the world championship standings. The one bright spot for him is that Verstappen's crash negated Ricciardo's bad weekend in Melbourne and they now have 25 and 22 points respectively.

Without a Red Bull that can in short time consistently match the speed of the two top teams it may be Ricciardo's race in 2017 will remain within his own garage.