Daniel Ricciardo remains puzzled by his tyre struggles in the Austrian Grand Prix which saw him comfortably beaten by team-mate Max Verstappen.
Having started in fifth place - three positions ahead of Verstappen - Ricciardo was passed by his team-mate at Turn 8 after just six laps in Austria and finished a distant fifth as Verstappen came home second. Ricciardo says Red Bull has been analysing where he struggled in comparison to the other car, with tyre life central to the gap.
"We’ve just been looking into it, in terms of what we could have done different or better to keep life in the tyres," Ricciardo said. "There’s nothing really obvious, there was a few of these races last year where it’s just there’s not concrete answers.
"But also it’s one of those ones, it’s an easier answer, sometimes it’s easy to hear but it’s not still really an answer. With these tyres it’s like you get them a little bit off or above or below their window and they do lose quite a bit of performance. And it could just be a case of some corners and just getting out of the window, but we’re still just trying to understand why I’d say.
"Looking at the difference across cars there wasn’t anything obvious with setup or anything like that so, obviously I’m looking at stuff if I was approaching corners differently or again doing something to work the tyres harder."
And Ricciardo says Red Bull is likely to have been struggling with tyres which were too hot but there was little he could do to look after them any more than he did.
"If anything if it’s one way or the other then we were over, but it’s one of those ones where they were keeping a high pace so I couldn’t have really saved tyres more and still been quick.
"It was either one or the other, I looked at it and saw that they were quick – the guys in front – and Kimi was coming so I was like ‘well they’re obviously not really saving tyres, they’re just going for it so I’ll go for it as well’ but I didn’t have the tyre life to go with that.
"I think I’ve understood a little bit, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no one big setup issue that went in the wrong direction, it’s a combination of a few little things."
When it was put to him that it was a strange situation, Ricciardo replied: "Yeah, I think I’m shit now! Never had it."
Chris Medland's 2016 British Grand Prix preview
From the cockpit: Felipe Nasr on back-to-back races
Scene at the Austrian Grand Prix
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