Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo 'pissed off' after Red Bull qualifying

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Daniel Ricciardo says he is "pissed off" about Red Bull's qualifying performance in Canada, but is using last year's victory as an example to keep his motivation high.

In 2014, Ricciardo qualified sixth and at the back of a tight bunch of four cars which included last year's team-mate Sebastian Vettel in third place. However, Ricciardo recovered to take victory in a dramatic race as Mercedes was hit by reliability issues.

Having qualified ninth on Saturday this year, Ricciardo admits he is similarly annoyed by the way qualifying panned out.

“It’s Saturday afternoon and being as pissed off as I am now, so maybe it means something good, I don’t know," Ricciardo said. "Yeah I was furious with qualifying last year, I was filthy with myself.

“This year I wouldn’t put the blame on myself as much as last year, it’s just frustrating with the circumstances."

And Ricciardo explained a change of approach in the final part of qualifying proved costly.

“Q1 and Q2 we did a build lap then a push but it felt by Q2 it was taking too much out of the tyres so by Q3 we thought we should be able to hit it but I couldn’t – it wasn’t ready. We just can’t seem to get a sweet spot and I think this is sort of bringing out the frustration.

“To be honest the rear wasn’t quite there the first lap, and so we can’t seem to get much right or get on top of it. We added a bit of downforce before quali and that should obviously in a way help bring the tyres in but we really struggled.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.