Daniel Ricciardo expects he’ll “sleep off” the “grim” P16 result he managed in qualifying at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
After a better Friday, Saturday couldn’t have gone much worse for the Australian at Portimao, as he was unable to match the late improvements others were making at the end of Q1, and missed the cut by just 0.091s.
It was another setback in what has been a tricky start to his new chapter at McLaren, and in the immediate aftermath, reasons for his lack of pace were hard to find.
“I don’t really know at the moment, it happens so quickly,” he said.
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“I guess Q1, you get a few laps… certainly the laps were tricky, especially going towards the last sector, it was really hard to hang on.
“Why we struggled or why it was difficult to put a lap together, it’s not so clear at the moment.
“There’s a few things for sure – there were some tenths left on the table, it was tricky. 16th was grim. Certainly, not a result I feel good about at all.”
What frustrates Ricciardo more is this result comes as he is making progress towards fully adapting to the MCL35M, although he admits it is still not a natural approach.
“I think it’s certainly still trying to get out a little bit of an old style, I am still quite conscious about how I approach every corner,” Ricciardo added.
“I feel like yesterday I had made a good step towards that. I certainly felt comfortable yesterday, certainly more comfortable than a couple of weeks ago.
“To be standing here now, it’s pretty dark. I will sleep it off.”