Daniel Ricciardo was once again at a loss to explain his poor qualifying performance in Austria, especially as the McLaren driver felt he had made 'a good step forward' since last week at the Red Bull Ring.
While teammate Lando Norris made it into the top-ten shootout to shine a thousand lights as he qualified on the front row alongside pace setter Max Verstappen, Ricciardo was left stranded in Q2 a lowly P13, the same position he reached last week.
"Honestly it felt a bit better this week, actually made some improvements to some areas. Last week there were some kind of key areas where I was missing out," he said on Saturday.
"Made a good step but it’s not really translating into lap time when it counts.
"I don’t really have much to say. It felt decent, I wasn’t too uncomfortable or anything like that, just the lap time is still a long way off and for that I don’t have much more of an explanation. It’s just not there."
©McLaren
Last week, a remarkable opening lap elevated Ricciardo into the top-ten at the outset only for a power unit glitch to undermine his efforts and push him back down to P13.
The Aussie is hoping for another blistering fast start to his race on Sunday, but with a positive outcome.
"I hope so," he said. "Like, the car has felt decent all weekend, it’s just we’ve been quite low down the timesheets,” he said when asked if the MCL35M will come alive in the race.
"So hopefully in the race, once we settle into a rhythm, we can show a little bit more pace consistently. But I’ll need another start like last week and use that momentum to help for the next 70 laps."
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