Daniel Ricciardo reckons the current update from Visa Cash App RB is the real test to decide their F1 2024 season, as he praises work done by Haas.
Having had a good ride in F1 2024 so far, Visa Cash App RB hit a roadblocker in the triple-header with their latest updates. It didn’t work as they expected it to be and were forced to run a hybrid form at Silverstone to understand the shortcomings.
While Yuki Tsunoda did manage to score a point but it wasn’t as convincing as they have managed to do so in the previous races. Ricciardo couldn’t even put himself in the Top 10 fight after he couldn’t eke out the pace that his teammate managed to.
The Australian felt he was doing the maximum but it just wasn’t enough. He reckons Visa Cash App RB is facing a real test at this juncture and steps taken now will decide the outcome in the time to come for the rest of the 2024 F1 season.
“This could be a real kind of shifting point,” said Ricciardo to media. “You’re at that moment where you need to make the best calls. Every moment of F1 is important, but this update and our correlation, and our understanding, can obviously dictate what we do with the next update and how well we understand it.
“What we learn now will basically dictate where our car is in October and November, so it’s a really important period for us. I’m obviously not an engineer and not an aerodynamicist. But in these moments, I feel our duty as a driver is to just give as much as we can. Feelings, feedbacks, positives, negatives, comparisons to other cars, everything – just to give them as much understanding of why we are where we are at the moment.
“I throw a lot on the table and just say: ‘you guys deal with it.’ But yeah, it’s obviously a little bit like that. We have to just put it all out there. Hopefully they can understand it and the simulator stuff as well, what we feel on the sim, and just try to correlate that to the real car. It’s a team effort. But yeah, there’s a little bit for us to go from these last three weeks,” summed up Ricciardo.
Looking at his rivals, the Australian has good praise for Haas for stepping up. Out of nowhere, the team is now just the four points behind Visa Cash App RB in the constructors’ standings and the way they are going, they could surpass them by the end of it.
There is genuine threat from Haas which is why Ricciardo thinks that this is a crucial period for his team to get on top of things. “Definitely Haas, in the last couple of weekends, Nico’s scored big two weekends in a row now, and all of a sudden our sixth place in the constructors, the gap isn’t there anymore,” he said.
“It’s three or four points. We know this sport can shift so quickly, and you never rest and that’s why, in fairness to the team, we brought updates a couple of weeks ago, we were pushing, we’ve been bringing updates every few races, and they’ve actually been working really well. This one hasn’t as much as certainly we would have wanted.
“But it’s not due to lack of effort. This is now where you get tested: where the season was looking really good – and now it’s at a kind of plateau. We have to make that right step. It’s not about throwing tables around the room. It is all constructive. Of course, people are frustrated, but this is all about being constructive and trying to keep everyone together. It’s also motivational. You see Haas. They’ve obviously found something, so there is lap time there. There are things that we can find. So, we have got to make sure we find them.”
Here’s Christian Horner on Yuki Tsunoda
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda on points in British GP
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