Motorsport: Ricciardo looking for rain to help

Daniel Ricciardo during the Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore. Photo / Getty Images

Formula One ace Daniel Ricciardo wants to keep striking fear into Mercedes but concedes he'll need some help from the weather gods to achieve his goal.

The Australian continued his strong season with second place at the Singapore Grand Prix on Monday, keeping him third in the overall standings on 179 points.

Mercedes duo Nico Rosberg (273 points) and Lewis Hamilton (265) will battle it out for the championship, but Ricciardo is full of confidence following four podium finishes from his past five races.

He was just 0.488 seconds behind Rosberg in Singapore.

Following that race, Rosberg said Ricciardo's charge for victory after an ambitious late pit stop made him feel uncomfortable.

Ricciardo hasn't won a race since 2014 and he faces an uphill battle to add to that tally in the final six contests of 2016.

But with Red Bull starting to gain on Mercedes, Ricciardo is determined to end his title drought.

"Even just putting that little bit of fear or doubt into Rosberg and not letting him take a comfortable victory, even that felt good," Ricciardo said.

"(Rosberg and Hamilton) have had it pretty easy the last few years.

"It's about time we made them a bit nervous. It's nice to give them a hard time.

"They're still controlling a lot of the races. Rosberg did a good job of controlling that last weekend. But it was nice to put some pressure on him."

With Red Bull trailing Mercedes in the battle for engine power, Ricciardo knows he'll need a bit of wet weather during the final six races of the season to challenge for race wins.

"If there's any rain (it will help). We're performing quite well in mixed conditions," he said.

"Malaysia can get the odd downpour.

"Suzuka in Japan - it's always typhoon season around then, so that could help.

"And Austin had some uncharacteristic bad weather last year. So you never know."

Ricciardo said Red Bull aimed to make gains of about five per cent or 10 per cent heading into next year in a bid to match the power of Mercedes.

The 27-year-old is spending time with friends and family in Perth before heading out to Malaysia for the next grand prix.

Ricciardo unveiled his favourite corners from iconic F1 tracks on Thursday as part of a specially created Scalextric track.