Daniel Ricciardo’s performance in the qualifying session this morning at Sazuka has left fans with a sense of optimism for what’s to come for the honey badger.
Missing FP1 as Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa took to the track and losing precious running time in FP2 due to heavy rainfall, Ricciardo had only FP3 to familiarise himself with the track.
Ricciardo took a spin across the grass into the first sector during FP3, claiming that he “felt like I did lose quite a bit in Turn 1 too, but I probably just got a bit too greedy.”
“I could feel it going and then it went. That was okay. Luckily there was grass and nothing painful.”
Despite these setbacks, the Australian driver set a competitive lap time of 1:29.472 in Q2, securing P11 for the race tomorrow. Ricciardo narrowly missed out on Q3, with teammate Tsunoda once again outperforming him, although the gap was a mere 0.055s between the pair in Q2.
Speaking about the heavy rainfall and his absence from FP1, he claimed: “I don’t want to use yesterday, like, why I’m half a tenth off. It’s not because of yesterday, but it certainly made today a bit trickier for us.
“I think in those circumstances, we also did quite well to recover what we did.”
Amidst the frustration of missing out on Q3, there is a glimmer of hope for the driver.
Following the qualifying session, Ricciardo acknowledged the disappointment of missing out on Q3, despite this being his best qualifying performance of the season yet, “Yeah, it’s mixed.
“Personally, obviously, there’s that frustration where you just miss out… but it’s also encouraging because it has been, certainly, for whatever reason, a trickier start to the year.”
Despite the challenges he’s faced thus far, Ricciardo remained upbeat about the team’s prospects for the race, hoping to make the most of the opportunities that lay ahead.
“Tomorrow, I actually feel quite good,” he noted.
“I know my engineer, I could feel he felt like me, but he was also trying to be realistic and appreciate that we actually did quite a good session.”
He also applauded the performance of his teammate for the job he’s done so far.
“I can’t take anything away from Yuki.
“I think he’s also been driving very well, so I’m not falling behind to someone also in bad form. We’ll get there.”
Looking ahead to future races, Ricciardo was optimistic about the team’s progress, believing that they are heading in the right direction with the car on his side of the garage.
“I feel like we have found a little bit more direction, which is positive,” he said. “It’s ultimately still not where I want to be, but… we’ll get there.”
Considering his lacklustre qualifying performance in Melbourne, several changes have been made to the car, as he was “certainly struggling with it and struggling to feel the car, especially in the high speed.”
Stability was chosen as the 8-time Grand Prix winner wanted to regain some confidence in the package. Unfortunately for him, it proved to be too slow.
“It was kind of drawing some confidence out of me, so we tried to look for that kind of stability. Sometimes, stable is safer and slower. At the time, we thought it made sense. It felt like it did, but I think in hindsight, we just ended up making the car slower, period.“
