Ricciardo: Teams & drivers still learning about 2017 cars

Daniel Ricciardo has revealed teams and drivers are still learning about the boundaries of setup and how hard they can push the 2017 Formula 1 cars even three-quarters of the way into the season.

This year saw the introduction of new designs aimed at significantly increasing the grip and lowering lap times compared to the previous generation of cars and, for the most part, that has worked although the gains haven’t been as big at some circuits as expected.

But the challenge both for engineers and drivers to optimise the performance of the cars has been one of the key themes across the season, with some teams seeing great improvement and other even seeing steps back at different stages.

“One thing we know this year is that the cars are really sensitive,” the Australian commented. “It is like they have more grip so they should be easier to drive and easier to feel the grip, but it is very easy to go too far and overstep it and it seems to cost a lot of lap time when you slide with these cars. It is still a bit of a puzzle we are trying to solve.”

His Red Bull team has been one such team that has made great strides as miscorrelations in the windtunnel during early development were put right and the conservative initial design has evolved to now become of the best on the grid.

“From Austria, we definitely understood the car better,” Ricciardo said of the progress made. “We can push it a bit more, get more to the limit without it suddenly snapping or getting away from us.

“I don’t know if it is the wider tyres or what, but there is something with these cars that is catching some drivers off guard at points. Pushing them really on the limit can sometimes be not only tricky but also slower. It is just finding that balance that varies track to track and different temperature. But that is F1.”

The wild variation in Mercedes’ performance based on track type, tyre compound and temperature has been one of the best examples of the 2017 cars proving difficult to master.

Despite their improved knowledge, even Red Bull are still making errors with Ricciardo explaining what happened in Singapore when, after a strong practice and qualifying, the pace wasn’t there in the wet/ dry race.

“Compared to Lewis, in the end, we lost time due to the gearbox problem that cost us two or three tenths a lap, then we had set up the car quite aggressively as after Friday we were quite strong.

“Then we set it up for a grippier track on Sunday and the tyres were holding up quite well, so we didn’t take a gamble but just went further in this direction. Once the rain came it obviously washed a lot of that grip off. So that hurt the setup,” he claimed.