Fifth 'as good as we could get' - Ricciardo

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Daniel Ricciardo admitted he was shocked at how much faster than Red Bull both Ferrari and Mercedes had proved to be in qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Australian was 1.355s off pole sitter Lewis Hamilton's time, and nine tenths slower than Kimi Raikkonen in fourth place. And as far as the Australian is concerned, what's worse is that the Red Bull had actually seemed pretty strong.

"You look at the gap to the leaders and it's still bigger than I expected," he sighed.

"And to be honest the car didn't feel too bad. So I guess it's just some pure performance things which we need to gain.

"I don't feel we could have done better than fifth. Personally I couldn't have done much more.

"Fifth is close to the front, at least as close as we can get for now. And if it rains maybe an opportunity arises.

"You won’t see me looking disappointed if it rains tomorrow," Ricciardo conceded. "The wet conditions always create more opportunities. It will be up to me to maximise those if it happens.

"We hope to have a good car in the wet; downforce plays a huge role in those conditions so we will have to wait and see."

Qualifying: Hamilton thwarts Vettel for pole in China

It was a least a better day for Ricciardo than his home Grand Prix weeks ago. And Saturday proved a tonic after poor weather meant everyone sat out practice on Friday.

"Personally I’m happy with what I was able to get out of the car this afternoon," he said. "But obviously as a team and as a driver we want more.

"I felt like up until today we still probably hadn’t got the most out of the setup. But in qualifying I felt pretty comfortable, I could lean on it more or less as much as I wanted.

"We improved the balance a lot from this morning and we made some bold changes which helped us in qualifying."

Unfortunately for the team, Ricciardo's team mate Max Verstappen suffered technical problems in qualifying and will start from the rear.

"It's not ideal for a team situation," Ricciardo said. "I think Max had some issues with the engine software, the mapping. As far as I'm aware he didn't have full power which obviously hurt him in Q1.

"Hopefully we'll get two cars more towards the front [early in the race] and that way try and find some way of putting pressure on the Ferrari and Mercedes."

GALLERY: All the pictures from Saturday in Shanghai

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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.