RB upgrades “encouraging” despite Spanish F1 qualifying disaster

Daniel Ricciardo has insisted RB’s Spanish Grand Prix performance with an upgraded car was “encouraging” despite both drivers missing out on Q2.

The Faenza-based outfit had been on the up in recent races and added a number of updates, including a new floor, to the car at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

But having struggled for pace through practice, both Ricciardo and team-mate Yuki Tsunoda failed to advance through to the second part of qualifying, with the Australian managing only the 18th fastest time, a position behind Tsunoda on the grid.

On how much the result could be accredited to a lack of understanding with the new components, Ricciardo said: “I’d like to think there’s still a bit more on the package to figure out, so that’s something we’ll keep doing but, on the flip side, I do feel like [in practice] we were much more out of balance and actually today, in quali, the car felt much more together.

“I actually didn’t think the car felt too bad in quali. Of course, there are some corners where you feel it should be flat there or whatever, so you know you may be still missing a bit of load but in general it was I felt much better than yesterday.

“I haven’t spoken to Yuki yet but I don’t think he was too unhappy with how the car felt. I think we’re just not that quick and normally, you put three sets in Q1… it never guarantees you a spot in Q2, but it gives you a much better chance and obviously, to still not make it I think it just shows that we just at the moment don’t have the pace with this current config so we’ll keep chipping away.”

Commenting on the work done between Friday and Saturday, Ricciardo added: “Yesterday felt like we were still trying to fight it [the car] a little bit so we did make some bigger changes overnight.

“So we probably haven’t perfected it right now and maybe that’s the encouraging thing but I feel like we did do a good job overnight to get the car in a better place.

“So from a feeling, it felt better today. I had more comfort and confidence in it but unfortunately on this thing, the stopwatch, we’re still where we were yesterday.

“With the floors, when you get a new floor, obviously that’s where these cars are so powerful in terms of the load and the aero characteristics, so it’s just trying to get on top of that. As I said, I felt like we made a good step today, but when Pierre [Hamelin, race…