Ricciardo 'disheartened' by gap to Mercedes in qualifying

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo admitted that he had been hoping to be a lot closer to the pole time set by Lewis Hamilton in today's qualifying session for the Spanish Grand Prix.

"I didn't really know what to expect," he told reporters afterwards. "You never really know until qualie. Obviously Friday paints one picture, but you're never really sure what's going to happen."

Ricciardo ended up over six tenths off the pace of the two Mercedes cars, putting him on the third row of the grid for tomorrow's race alongside team mate Max Verstappen.

"A little bit disheartening," he admitted. "I don't know what I could have done more with what we had. With the laps we put in, I thought we would have been a couple of tenths from pole not, what was it, six or seven.

"I think we both put in a strong performance on the supers [in Q3]," he continued. "It wasn't our preferred tyre. Just from the way the car was feeling this weekend, I think we were more comfortable on the softs.

That's why I went for that tyre in the second part of Q3. I chipped away on my lap time by a few hundreds, but it wasn't enough and they [Mercedes] put in some belters at the end.

"That gap is not so nice," he sighed.

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Almost as painful was the narrowest of margins by which he lost out to his team mate, meaning Ricciardo will start in sixth place - one spot behind Verstappen.

"The two one thousandths of a gap that's not nice either, but it is what it is," he agreed.

Ricciardo has been able to make up for disappointing qualifying performances with some great race pace. However he didn't sound all together convinced that this is on the cards again this weekend.

"Yep. Just going to say yes," he replied when asked if he would be able to challenge the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers ahead of him. "I don't know. We'll try."

Verstappen meanwhile blamed the nature of the recently resurfaced Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for the reason why Red Bull had found themselves so far off the pace today.

"Now from turn 1 to turn 4 it's flat-out with corners in it," he explained. "So it's even harder for us because we lose even more speed because of the friction from the tyres so we just lose more top speed.

"And from turn 7 to turn 10 is also straight now because turn 9 is flat. It's just all a bit more painful for us.

"Especially in Q3 when they also then add this extra power which they even have just for that session, then it all gets a bit harder," he added. "We don't have that power mode."

Like his team mate, Verstappen was also unsure how things stood in terms of which tyre compounds were performing better here this weekend, or what the strategy will be for the race.

"I still don't know what the full story is to be honest," he said. "I chose the supersoft, Daniel went on the soft. I think Mercedes went on the soft? Honestly I haven't seen really.

"Even for me it was a guess, so a bit tricky.

"I don't think many people will choose the supersoft. Over one lap maybe you could go a bit faster, but in the long run it would just fall apart.

"I think a lot of people will choose a soft and a medium," he decided.

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