Daniel Ricciardo said he wouldn’t have been satisfied with his best lap in qualifying even if it hadn’t been deleted for a track limits infringement.
The RB driver will start his home race 18th after being eliminated in Q1. He set a best time of 1’17.466, a tenth of a second slower than his team mate, which would have been good enough for a place in Q2. However Ricciardo ran off-track at turn four and his lap time was deleted.
“I wouldn’t even say it sunk in when it happened,” he told the official F1 channel. “Pierre [Hamelin, his race engineer] told me and I kind of knew what it meant, but even now I don’t think it’s fully sunk in.
“On the lap, I knew turn four I was fighting and I knew I washed [out] a little bit wider. But it happens and then you think about the next corner. So I nearly forgot about it until he brought it up.”
However Ricciardo was more concerned that he felt he’d got the best out of the car yet wasn’t quick enough.
“I honestly felt like I’d gave it all I had. So I was happy with the lap, but I wasn’t happy with still where we are in terms of the stopwatch. So for me that still is not quite adding up in my head where I think it should be.
“It’s been a struggle, I would say, all weekend. But come qualifying, everyone puts it on and you can see where you’re at, and that lap was all I had and was still slower.
“I’ve done enough of these laps and qualis and all that to know where I am and there’s still some things I think where we’re missing. But I’m not sure because the team’s put a lot of effort in since Saudi to fix some things that we saw and adjusted the car and put on some new parts here and there, and it looked better. But I’m still a little bit sceptical.”
The 2024 season marks Ricciardo’s return to full-time competition in F1 after being dropped by McLaren two years ago as he struggled to master their car. Today he said he couldn’t understand why he is losing time in some corners.
“The car itself, I feel the balance and that is all within the window. I’m driving, I’m not really struggling with anything in particular. But then you’ll see just some corners I’m a chunk slower, but that’s kind of all I’ve got.
“So, I don’t know. I’ve got some thoughts but I just know a lap like that, it’s normally faster.”
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2024 Australian Grand Prix
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