Daniel Ricciardo says he is still seeking the last “five percent” of performance despite a strong first qualifying at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
With his first races at McLaren still seen as a learning curve for the Australian, Ricciardo has been struggling to match teammate Lando Norris throughout practice.
When the going got serious under the lights on Saturday, however, the former Red Bull and Renault driver showed his class, producing a lap to put him just 0.047s ahead of Norris in Q3.
“That is a small tick for sure,” Ricciardo admitted. “But the biggest enjoyment I have now is knowing that my confidence in the car tonight made a big step.
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“All through testing it slowly came, and yesterday was a little bit more in P2 than P1, but I still knew I needed to find quite a bit of time today if I wanted to be competitive with Lando and Q3.
“It is still not perfect but I am happy with the progress. I cannot complain.”
With such limited testing ahead of the new season, Ricciardo was asked how far down the process he was of adapting to his McLaren.
“I am content,” said Ricciardo. “As experienced as I am in F1, the truth is that a new car is a new car.
“I realised quite quickly that you can get to that 95%, but finding that last 5% is going to take time. I still don’t think I got all of it out of it, but I certainly made a good step today.
“I would not say my lap was phenomenal, but let us say for the first qualifying with a new team I am actually really happy with the progress.”
After mixing it up with Mercedes and Red Bull in practice, McLaren dropped back into the midfield on Saturday as the other teams showed their hand in terms of performance.
That didn’t come as a surprise to the Woking-based squad though, and Norris was satisfied with where he and Ricciardo will be starting.
“I’m very happy,” said the Briton via Formula1.com. “I think sixth and seventh for us is good.
Q3 ends with Daniel P6 and Lando in P7. Nice work today, team. ??#BahrainGP ?? pic.twitter.com/3vk9lwCkSj
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) March 27, 2021
“Maybe the other way around would have been even better,” Lando teased. “But we were very close, and it wasn’t like there was ever one of us miles in front or like we thought we could extract a lot more out of the car.
“I think we’re where we deserve to be, where we expected to be, with the AlphaTauris being extremely quick and the Ferraris being very quick too.
“We always knew that and we knew that coming into this weekend and this qualifying, so I think we can be happy with sixth and seventh.”
As for Sunday expectations, Ricciardo is ready for an exciting race.
“I think the race pace we can be quite strong, and definitely challenge Charles [Leclerc] and [Pierre] Gasly,” he said. “Our target will be the top five. I think if we start the season with the top five that would be awesome.
“But more importantly, my personal target is to keep finding that rhythm and confidence in the car. To put it in the top five tomorrow will be a nice start to the McLaren journey.”