Daniel Ricciardo, who raced up to 4th place in the Miami Grand Prix Sprint, was eliminated in Q1 of qualifying.
The Australian driver had to deal with a poor qualifying session in Miami just hours after finishing a season-best fourth in the race session. This was the best result since the end of 2021.
Daniel Ricciardo lost in Q1
Ricciardo, who clocked a 1:28.617 in Q1, was unable to advance further as he finished 18th, one of five cars eliminated at the first hurdle in Miami.
In Saturday’s sprint race, he finished fourth ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, but Ricciardo’s poor qualifying and disappointment were compounded by a three-place grid drop penalty brought into the weekend for a safety car overtaking violation in China two weeks ago. It got worse.
The RB driver, who started last in Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix, approached the media in Miami, laughed and jokingly requested that they only ask him questions about the sprint race.
Ricciardo looked serious as he tried to explain away his poor qualifying session, pointing out that the tires were the problem and saying he felt how McLaren’s Lando Norris was doing after sprint qualifying. The British driver had shown speed throughout SQ1 and SQ2, but a change to ostensibly faster soft tires slowed McLaren’s pace.
“I think it was one of those matches where I didn’t think I could do anything in that I didn’t have the grip at the start of the lap,” Ricciardo said.
“I felt the same way Lando felt yesterday in SQ3. I don’t know what he said after that, but I watched his lap and he was about a second slower on the soft. I could already see him skating from the exit and it was a mess and that was the honest feeling.
“I felt like I was handicapped a little bit because I didn’t think that second set of tires was going to perform as well as it should with the new softs. Obviously, I don’t have an answer as to why. I don’t know if Rand had the answers yesterday, but I definitely felt his pain.
“It’s frustrating, but it’s not like I changed the car and changed something different and thought, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.'” The first set was good. As always, it took me a while to find it, but I definitely felt it was very easy to find it on the second set, even if I was a little low on fuel with a new set of tires and a course.
“The lap times are in the car, but I have no idea what happened to the second set of tires. It’s kind of silly to say that because there’s no facts behind it, but that’s what I want. That’s how I feel when they don’t give me that, so the frustration is there.”
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After a tough start to the season, Ricciardo received a new chassis at the Chinese Grand Prix and has improved in the sprints, finding the ‘dog in him’ as he fights to keep the faster cars behind him. He said he was glad that he could feel it coming to the surface.
“Obviously it’s very nice to be fighting at the top, but I feel like I’m making a statement by just keeping what I know is a faster car than that,” Ricciardo said. “Good. I’m glad I still have that dog in me. It’s cool. A lot of people like to talk trash, so that’s a good thing.” [put a] Subtly, holding up a few middle fingers. ”
Ricciardo, whose hashing secured his first points of the season, said F1 continues to show that it is a “very interesting sport” where “everything can change quickly”, adding that he and his RB team produced in the sprint part of the race. He said he took advantage of the opportunity. weekend.
“For the first few races, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” he said.
“So I had a little sniff yesterday and I feel like I took advantage of that. So this morning again, I had a good start and everything was going well and I thought this was my chance. I felt it was time to make some noise.
“Four hours later, tomorrow we’ll start from the end!
“Honestly, the weekend was still good. We’ll take a look at it this afternoon. It’ll probably dictate the rest of the weekend, but I don’t think it’s reflective of our weekend. I don’t think so. It’s still a very positive situation and I want to be in Q3 with Yuki, but we’ll figure it out for tomorrow.”
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