RB had a disappointing showing in qualifying ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix, with both Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo failing to make it past Q1.
Having recently found a second wind after a slow start to the season, the team has been on a consistent point scoring streak since Miami. Unfortunately, that looks set to change in Spain, with RB visibly lacking pace since their FP1 outing on Friday. This continued into Saturday’s qualifying session, where Tsunoda and Ricciardo were eliminated already in the opening segment of the session. They will line up 17th and 18th respectively.
Tsunoda expressed his disappointment over team radio after being informed he failed to make the cut, despite putting in what he felt was “a good lap.”
RB, like many other teams, opted to introduce an upgrade package at the familiar testing ground that is Barcelona. Ricciardo believes the upgrades have potential, even if they have yet to translate to on-track results.
“I’d like to think there’s still a bit more on the package to figure out,” he said after the qualifying session.
“So yeah, that’s something obviously we’ll keep doing. But on the flip side, I do feel like yesterday we were much more out of balance. And actually today, you know, in quali, the car felt much more together.
“I actually didn’t think the car felt too bad in quali. Of course, there’s some corners where you feel, yeah, ‘oh, it should be flat there’ or whatever. So, you know, you may be still missing a bit of load.
“But in general, I felt much better than yesterday. So to still be back where we are, I think that’s, yeah, still a bit more to find, I guess.
“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. We’ll keep chipping away—three weeks on the bounce now.”
Ricciardo admitted he was pleased with the setup changes that were made overnight on his side of the garage, improving his feeling in the car compared to Friday.
“Yesterday it felt like we were still trying to fight it a little bit,” he said. “So we did make some bigger changes overnight.
“Look, we probably haven’t perfected it right now. And maybe that’s the encouraging thing. But I feel like we did make 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,” Ricciardo said of the upgrades.
He mentioned feeling as perplexed as Tsunoda when he was told his final effort wasn’t enough to advance to Q2.
“I felt like we made a good step today, but when Pierre [Hamelin, Ricciardo’s race engineer] told me P18, I think it was, we ended up, I didn’t really have anything to say on the radio because I was honestly quite surprised.
“I knew we’re not going to be at P10, but I honestly thought that would have been good enough for Q2.”
Ricciardo acknowledged that RB will have their work cut out for them, trying to gain a better understanding of their new package across the European triple header.
“Yeah, there is certainly some similar characteristics in Austria and Silverstone,” Ricciardo said. “On one hand, it’s like, okay, we got some work to do. But at least we got, let’s say, a good few weeks now of a proper test in terms of, test the package, test how good we can bounce back, understand it.
“So in a way, we have to face it head on. And yeah, good to maybe some weak tracks coming up that we can probably learn more about the car on.”
Ricciardo doesn’t believe he’s reached his ceiling for the season with his strong Canadian Grand Prix performance—qualifying P5 and finishing P8—with comparisons already being drawn to last year’s Mexican Grand Prix.
“Let’s say not yet,” he laughed, “but it’s weird. You know, you can be—very different track, but within two tents two weeks ago and here probably two seconds.”
Tsunoda shared a similar view in his post-qualifying comments.
“Upgrades seem to be working as they expected, so I think the package is working, it’s not doing anything strange,” he said. “Just clearly missed something this week. We tried multiple stuff obviously, but weren’t able to turn it around.”
“I mean, at least P16 I wanted to hear, but P17 was quite far away from where I wanted or where I was expecting from that lap,” Tsunoda said of his qualifying effort. “At least I feel that I’m able to maximise something, but at the same time, yeah, quite disappointed hearing P17 from that lap.”
“Hopefully it’s track specific, but also at the same time we know what we could have done better to prepare into this week, and we know what we’re missing to probably make it better from the current situation.
“But at the same time, we couldn’t manage to put it [together] this week at least, and yeah, that was probably the main limitation at least this week for our car.”
