Ricciardo finished the opening day of practice at Hockenheim in fifth position, almost four tenths off the pace of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel in third, on his low-fuel run.

"On one-lap [pace] it is close – I think we could have got a bit more out of our low-fuel run but it will be close tomorrow on one lap," said Ricciardo.

"Seb won the Ferrari/Red Bull battle today. I think we can get a little bit more out of one lap and [it] should be a good battle."

Ricciardo was upbeat about his long-run pace, even relative to the speed of the Mercedes duo.

"The high-fuel stuff was really positive, so if we can carry that across to Sunday then we could be looking quite nice," he added.

"Today looked closer to Mercs on the high fuel, so that was good – but let's see what happens on Sunday. Definitely the high fuel was competitive.

"All going well, tomorrow we can qualify third and, beyond that, our race stint looked really good.

"If we can replicate what we did on Sunday then I think we can have a really good chance in the race."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble