Daniel Ricciardo felt he had a good F1 Belgian GP to initially miss out on points, as Yuki Tsunoda reveals of car issue throughout the weekend.
It was hard fought from Visa Cash App RB’s Ricciardo in F1 Belgian GP and he ended up outside the points in on the road but for the gain of one point after the grand prix when Mercedes’ George Russell was disqualified for infringement.
During the race, Ricciardo sorely wanted it to be the fight for last point as he felt he drove well enough in the race. “It was hard because I knew some cars were going to try a one-stop, I didn’t really know my position during the race and I knew it would kind of all work out,” he said to media. “And in my head, I was kind of saying, ‘Get a piece of Stroll’.
“I know there’s some kind of quick cars not too far ahead. So, I really thought we would have ended up in the points. When I had Ocon behind me, I think that’s when I knew I was 10th and I was like, ‘Ah, I really thought I was maybe ninth’. Because I knew that holding him off was going to be tricky.
“I think he was strong all weekend and also, he just came out on fresher tyres. So once he got past, I knew we’d just missed out on points. I tried to stay with him, but look, put it this way, I think we had a really good race. I just think some other drivers also had a really good race,” summed up Ricciardo, who expanded on starting on the soft compound.
He ended up being the only one on the lightest compound which derailed the chances to go for one-stop even. “I was very surprised we were the only one,” said Ricciardo. “I think it obviously stopped us from maybe attempting a one-stop, but I was able to stay with the guys on mediums in the first stint, so for the two-stop it didn’t change too much in the end.
“I feel like every time we pitted, I think we were able to undercut a car and then get a bit of track position and hold it. So yeah, we started to make some moves, we got a couple of positions up, so I think we did have a good race, we did move forward just unfortunately, didn’t get rewarded,” summed up Ricciardo.
On his teammate side, Tsunoda revealed that there was something off in his car as his engineer noted after the grand prix. Despite the power unit penalty, all weekend, he didn’t look his self and any changes to the car couldn’t be done due to mixed Saturday.
“There was lack of pace, sounds like there is something in my car still after feedback from my engineer after the race, something was always there throughout this weekend,” said Tsunoda to media. “It started with quite a big difference to the car, but I wasn’t really able to improve that because obviously I was in a mixed condition and it was hard to prepare.
“So, I mean, for me, my scenario is to hopefully get sorted out a bit in terms of car. I just felt it was general lack of balance. The front end was not there, also brake, here was an issue and I reported that it was an issue. But also there’s something other than that. These things, especially like these tight fields, I don’t accept that.”
Here’s Sergio Perez, Christian Horner post Belgian GP
Here’s Red Bull trio on critical Belgian GP weekend
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