Daniel Ricciardo faced a challenging return to the cockpit on Friday in Austin and admits that there is still work to do to bring himself and his car up to speed.
After spending the better part of the last two months rehabilitating his left hand that was injured last August in a crash at the Dutch Grand Prix, Ricciardo gave himself a clean bill of health to return to the cockpit.
But this weekend’s Sprint schedule, which typically features just a single practice session, didn’t provide Ricciardo was the ideal running plan to kick himself back into gear.
The Aussie set the 14th fastest time in FP1, but barely survived the first segment of qualifying. There was no progress however in Q2 in which he also committed a track limit infringement on his final run.
“That lap was not any better, so that was a little bit of just hold it and see what happens because it was already feeling a bit poor,” Ricciardo said after the session.
“We were kind of fighting from the start a little bit. It’s hard obviously with one session [of practice], you kind of have to set up the car and it is what it is for quali.
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“There’s a few things for sure I would have liked to get out of the car but it’s hard to really know how much we can do in an hour and then go straight into quali.
“Of course, I’d love more, I feel I could do more. But we got another chance tomorrow so we will try and learn from tonight.”
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Ricciardo felt that the day’s limited mileage rather than his rustiness had weighed the most in his performance.
“There was nothing else holding me back today,” he added. “Just trying to find a little bit of that feeling in the car and the set-up.
“As the track ramped up, we plateaued a bit and there’s a few things with setup… As always you could do a little bit more. [You think] maybe we could have gone in this direction, but we will see what we can discover tonight.
“I wish I wasn’t in 15th, but it’s still nice to be back behind the wheel and result aside, it’s been an enjoyable day.
“I think that’s where it’s also hard with this format. You can’t do anything overnight and have to just wait for the wind to change and hope that your car feels different tomorrow.
“There’s things I can keep improving and a bit to still work on with the car setup.”
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On the other side of the AlphaTauri garage, Yuki Tsunoda clocked in P11, the Japanese charger missing out on a spot in the final shootout by jut 0.018s.
While frustrated, he nevertheless felt that he had done his best.
“To be honest, it’s always like this. It’s kind of jinxed this year, but to be honest, I’ve gotten used to it,” he said.
“Frustrating, but at the same time the teams in front of me have both their cars in the top 10, so I feel like we extracted the performance our car had today.
“P11 isn’t a bad position to start in on Sunday because it’s close to the points, so I’m looking forward to it. Our race pace this morning during FP1 didn’t look bad, so the potential is there for tomorrow and Sunday.”
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