Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo insisted he wasn't too bothered not to get in a low-fuel flying lap on new ultrasofts on Friday afternoon.
The Australian had just started a qualifying run in Free Practice 2 when the session was briefly red flagged. A wire had been pulled up through the tarmac at the start-finish line, causing a safety hazard.
Ricciardo had to abort his lap and return to the pits. Along the way he was reported for driving too fast under the red flag conditions, earning him a summons to the race stewards.
Overall, Ricciardo didn't think that it had cost him all that much.
"My low fuel run got cut short by the red flag," he confirmed. "I was not too disappointed to see the red flag, I don’t think the lap was that good,”
"To be honest, after doing about nine turns on that lap I wasn’t fully happy with the balance.
"I think I would have been a bit quicker than on the soft tyre and moved up from where we are," he added. "But I still don’t think it would have been a P1 lap time
Although the track went green again just a few minutes later, he remained in the team garage for a suspension change. He rejoined the fray during the final half hour and ended FP2 seventh fastest.
"Generally it’s not been a bad day," he said. "I was definitely happier with the long runs than the short.
“The short runs, we still have a bit to find with the car," he added. "That ultrasoft run on low fuel before the red flag, I had quite a lot of understeer.
"Looking at the times it’s nice to see that everyone seems to be pretty close," he noted. "Hopefully that’s the reality.
"It would be great if the top three teams and even Haas can be close as it would be a pretty nice start to the new season."
Ricciardo said that he wasn't sure how relevant today's session would prove to be, given the forecast for rain on Saturday.
“Tomorrow is going to be wet," he confirmed. "I don’t think it will hurt. We always enjoy some wet weather, it kind of evens everything out.
“I think the wet will gives us potentially a bit more of a chance. The last wet qualifying we had here was 2014 and that was not too bad. Hopefully we can try and do that again."
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