Daniel Ricciardo was left searching for answers to his depressed pace in last Sunday’s British Grand Prix, joking that he hoped to find “big hole” in his VCARB 01 to justify his underperformance.
The Australian driver, who had qualified 15th, ended race day just two spots higher in 13th position but three places behind his RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda who claimed the final point in the standings.
While the 52-lap event proved tricky due to the changing conditions, there were no operational missteps that set Ricciardo back. The F1 veteran reckoned that his car just wasn’t fast enough.
“Hopefully there's a big hole in my car that I haven't seen yet, and that's the reason why we're really slow,” Ricciardo said, quoted by Speedcafe.
“We honestly, just as a team, for sure we struggled here.
“Looking at the Williams at the end on that stint, and [Logan] Sargeant pulled away from me and I believe [Alex] Albon came and passed [Yuki] Tsunoda.
“Yuki got a point, he did well, but I think as a team we weren't very competitive this weekend.”
After a challenging qualifying session on Saturday marked by the poor timing of his runs, Riccardo hoped to extract more from his car on Sunday. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“I certainly struggled more in the race. I'm still not completely sure why,” he admitted.
“There were moments the engineer was telling me, I think I was about eight-tenths off, and I was quite surprised to hear that because I felt like I just crossed the line and did a good lap.
“So yeah, a little bit probably lost in terms of where that pace lies.
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“Fast forwarding to the end, or even the start where it was dry, yeah, struggled for sure, grip and balance.
“But I think these circuits had exposed us a little bit and the other teams have made some good updates.
“Why I struggled more than, for the most part, more than Yuki today, yeah, try and have a look.”
Ricciardo admitted that he couldn’t pinpoint a specific weakness embedded in his car during the race, but suggested that a lack of “load” had perhaps weighed on his efforts.
“My engineer asked me where, what am I missing? What do I need? And I felt like I was saying, like, the balance and stuff was actually okay, felt like we're just lacking load,” he explained.
“That's why, when I heard the laptimes of the others, I was quite confused because I did the lap, and the lap felt pretty clean – a few little things, but felt decent.
©RB
“I was close to the potential of the car, and that's when I was like, I don't really have an answer right now.
“Watching the other cars in front, I felt the high-speed they were really able to pull away a little bit more.
“So probably my explanation [is] we're lacking a bit of load.
“Downforce is king, but I think there's still things we missed today, or my assumption is we missed some things, just with our car and optimising it,” he added.
“We have to, looking forward, make everything better but right now with what we had… probably still with set-up, there's maybe a couple of things myself and the team are maybe not quite grasping.”
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