Yuki Tsunoda was left confused and frustrated after today's Sprint qualifying session at Shanghai International Circuit which saw him miss the cut at the end of the first round.
The Visa Cash App RB driver will line up on the back row of Saturday's Sprint grid leaving him with little chance of making it into the top eight for points in the 19-lap race.
The Japanese driver - who has taken points in the last two Grand Prix outings in Australia and Japan - wasn't able to explain why things had gone awry for him on Friday.
“I struggled with the balance and grip in general from FP1," he said after the session. "Even for Sprint qualifying, we tried different things, but I couldn’t put it all together.
"Not sure what’s happening there but it definitely was not easy today," he added. "It’s not because of the weather and the general track conditions, I just could not achieve more.
"I haven’t struggled this much so far," he admitted. "It’s strange, but there are still sessions to go, so we’ll continue collecting the data."
“Not a great day for us obviously, and certainly not what we’ve become accustomed to qualifying this car," was the honest view of RB racing director Alan Permane.
"It was apparent from the first session this morning that we were struggling a little bit for speed," he said. While the RB engineers are unable to make changes to the car under parc ferme conditions, not all is lost.
Once the Sprint is over the team will be able to work on the car before qualifying for the Grand Prix. "We’ll do the Sprint tomorrow and then obviously we’ve got a chance to change the cars," commented Permane.
"There’ll be a lot of work going on tonight with the engineers here and back in Italy and the UK because we have an opportunity to adjust the setup for the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon.”
"Qualifying tomorrow is very important," agreed Tsunoda. ""Hopefully we can find something until then. Let’s see how it goes.”
While Tsunoda will start from 19th place on the Sprint grid, his under-fire team mate Daniel Ricciardo will be a few rows ahead in 14th. While not the greatest success, it was certainly enough to give Ricciardo a boost.
“It’s one of those days where P14 is not an obvious result to get excited about, but personally I think it was a much better day because we hit the ground running this morning and were in the top 10.
"It’s close - not somewhere where we’re going to be particularly over the moon, but on our personal little path that we’re on it was a positive day.
"We knew getting into Q3 would have been tough, but the feeling on track was definitely a bit better so there's some encouragement from that," he noted.
"Looking at tomorrow, the Sprint is certainly another chance to come through the field and have a little bit of a battle. It’s a circuit where you can overtake because there are some good opportunities. I’m really looking forward to that.”
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