Daniel Ricciardo says he must be “adult” with his emotions after a disappointing qualifier at the Red Bull Ring on Friday.
Ricciardo’s Friday at the Austrian Grand Prix went from bad to worse from practice to qualifying.
His preparations for the weekend were hampered in FP1 when he suffered a DRS problem that made him unable to complete the planned program.
Leaving the track for the classification, he left the pace and finished in 16th place, losing a place in Q2 by 0.024 s.
Asked by FoxSports where he was losing pace, the clearly disappointed driver replied: “A bit everywhere.
“I don’t just want to get out of the turnstiles and say‘ see you later ’; Obviously, I just want to find out and the only way it will improve is if I try to learn and understand a little more.
“So, yes, try to be just an adult in this situation.
“Of course, I’ll let out a little bit of excitement, whatever it is, but in the end we still have a long weekend ahead of us, so I still have to keep my eyes on the award and know it will get better if we keep working . ”
This is the end of Q1. Lando gets it, but unfortunately Daniel is out.
NOR 🇬🇧 P8RIC 🇦🇺 P16 # AustrianGP 🇦🇹 pic.twitter.com/WIvBbtPcUm
– McLaren (@ McLarenF1) July 8, 2022
McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl said his driver “struggled to extract performance” from the car.
But with Lando Norris only reaching 15th place, one place ahead of his Australian teammate, Seidl admits the whole session “was not good enough”.
He continued: “We need to get to the bottom of this and make sure we eliminate all these different issues as quickly as possible.
“If you look at FP1, on Daniel’s side we had a DRS problem that compromised our career plan. We couldn’t follow the full program because we were focused on solving the DRS problem.
“On the part of Lando, unfortunately, after installing a new PU for this weekend we had a loss of power. It’s something we have yet to investigate together with our fellow Mercedes.
“Even so, we managed to prepare the two cars for the classification. But then, from the first exit, we experienced a cable brake problem next to Lando, which did not allow him to push the car to the limit, give him confidence and then did not allow him to put any. significant lap time in Q2.
“It’s a shame because I think the lap time he was able to score in Q1 could see the potential we had for today’s package.
“But that doesn’t matter if you don’t do it as a team.”