Daniel Ricciardo received an unwanted accolade on Friday when he became the first Formula One driver to trigger a red flag at the new Baku City Circuit in practice for this weekend's Grand Prix of Europe.
During the morning session. Ricciardo went into turn 15 a little too fast and drifted into a relatively soft rear-end impact with the outside barrier. Ricciardo himself was unhurt, but the impact did a lot of damage done to the car as a result.
"The crash this morning proved that it's a challenging circuit. The walls are close - it's a street circuit - so there are some very narrow parts, and if you just get the turn-in wrong it can bite you as it showed with me in FP1.
"The track's not dangerous, it's possible to crash, sure, as I showed, but the safety is fine. You can crash but you can crash safely. It damaged a lot of the car but for me the impact didn't feel as dramatic.
"It's cool, it's part of learning. Obviously I said sorry for the team and the mechanics but they did a very good job to get me out for the start of FP2. That was good.
"Obviously it's a street circuit so you need to be willing to find the limit, get close to the walls, but the surface is very new so you need to find where the grip is. Some corners it seems you don't take the usual racing line to find the grip, so trying to explore the track is definitely a challenge as well."
Despite the accident, which saw him miss out on around half an hour of track time in FP1, Ricciardo didn't see it as a big setback after he was able to get back out in FP2 with no further loss of time.
"We had as much track time as we needed more or less, we just haven't really found the best balance today so we need to understand some things tonight.
"It's difficult. You have a lot of variables - new surface, trying to find what set-up and balance works with that. You have very tight corners but then a very long straight and what do you do with the downforce and aerodynamics. There's a lot of obstacles, certainly a very challenging circuit but quite fun as well."
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