Ricciardo is set to serve grid penalties for the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix.

After the second win of the season at Monaco Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo has certainly thrown in his gauntlet to the Championship title according to some fans. Currently, he is third in the Championship table behind Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

But he is set to endure a very difficult weekend in Montreal as Red Bull is certain that he would have to serve grid penalties. At the moment they are not sure how many grid penalties he would have to serve.

“He will definitely be taking some penalties in Montreal, we haven’t heard at the moment just how many,” confirms Red Bull design guru Adrian Newey.

“One of things there is whether the battery was damaged or not in Monaco, so until we know that from Renault we don’t know exactly what we’re facing.

“The K [MGU-K] is definitely a penalty,” added Newey.

During Monaco Grand Prix, MGU-K of Daniel’s car stopped working and that resulted in the loss of power to the tune of 160 bhp.

This season, while drivers are allowed three engines they are allowed only two units of MGU-Ks. And Daniel was on his second MGU-K after a failure in Bahrain.

This is certainly not a good news for Daniel Ricciardo, who finished third last year in Canadian Grand Prix. Even though the season is witnessing a three way fight for the Championship battle, reliability is going to be a huge differentiator. Contrast Daniel’s situation with Lewis Hamilton’s who is still running on parts he started with in Australia. Renault have a difficult task to close the gap to Mercedes not only with the straight line speed but also in with reliability of their engines. The gulf between the two manufacturers is indeed still vast in that respect.

This predicament with Daniel’s beg another question, will Max rise to the occasion and shoulder the responsibility? He was having a good race in Canada last year before his engine gave up on him. Time will tell, but all eyes will be on him.