Daniel Ricciardo hoped to turn things around at his home Grand Prix, but he still needs to fully understand how to extract more performance from the car.
The Aussie driver was stuck in dirty air for quite some time during the race, and that didn’t help his performance. He still tries to look at the bright side and is happy that in clean air he felt more confident driving. However, he admitted that there is still a lot of work to do for him to get on Yuki Tsunoda’s level.
“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to process the race right after. I struggled with the hard initially, we had quite a bit of front graining, and in the second [stint with hards] when I had clean air the pace was good.
“There are some pros to take, but there are still some things I’m trying to get on top of. We’ll go from there, it’s been a slower start to the season than I expected, but we’ll keep moving forward.”
Ricciardo continued by saying that he will work hard to understand where he can improve in his driving and whether his lack of performance comes from something wrong in the car.
“Yeah, I think there’s a two-part process now. I think there’s obviously the ‘I look as much as I can into myself, into data, into on boards, how I’m driving, what’s making me do certain things,’ and then ‘is that self-induced, or is there a reason? Is that something coming from the car which isn’t giving me the feeling I want?’
“And then I’m asking the engineers lots of questions, you know, because the car is pretty much the same as last year. Obviously, it’s a different car, but it’s not that we changed the whole philosophy and the handling, the characteristics are fairly similar.
“So, I’m sure we’ll find something and keep our heads straight and keep our eyes on the prize, I guess.”
Ultimately, he said that prior to the race he also spoke with Christian Horner, who told him not to be discouraged by how things are going at the moment. Ricciardo said that, of course, a few disappointing results won’t stop him and the RB F1 Team from staying focused and learning.
“No, he [Horner] just wished me well and just told me to keep my head down and not be discouraged. You know, I think it’s a very different situation to McLaren. I think especially in 2022 I was running on very, very little confidence. I was kind of confused with the car and I didn’t really understand it. It was that was a completely different thing. This isn’t that.
“We’re certainly not achieving what we thought we would be, but it’s not through just being lost or losing confidence or anything. So we know we can do it. I thought it would have happened this weekend. Unfortunately, it didn’t, but we’re not going to start letting the noise creep in. Just say stay true to the course and it’ll turn around.”