Daniel Ricciardo says he is both frustrated and confused after he was unable to get grip into his tyres throughout qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix.
While Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen battled for pole, Ricciardo was unable to match pace in all three sessions and ultimately qualified in seventh, almost a second slower than his team mate.
“It wasn’t about Max, actually. It was about just being confused, not understanding what was going on, in terms of the grip,” says Ricciardo.
“We didn’t touch the car, even from yesterday we left the car as it was. Every time we left the pits it was just no grip. We tried experimenting in Q3 to do an extra warm up lap to give the tyres something, but it just seemed like what I left the box with was the level of grip I had throughout all of qualifying.”
Ricciardo says the tyre warm up issues he experienced in qualifying were beyond any usual challenges he would typically have to bring tyres up to temperature.
“Sometimes you get a set of tyres that you can’t get turned on properly and you might lose a bit of time, but every run was the same story,” says Ricciardo.
“So super frustrated and confused but I’m sure we’ll find something. But doesn’t make the session any easier to go through. We couldn’t really do anything.”
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erikje
28th October 2017, 23:26
VER also complained about the tires not working. When he was forced tot break of his timed round as a result of HAR’s yellow he did a second try and succeeded in getting the tires in the window.
RIC tried the same but to no avail. So let’s hope tomorrow the riddle is solved.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
29th October 2017, 18:25
Riddle or not, Daniel is on the old engine, so .2 on specification and .something on mileage. I can see Max winning even though he clearly blocked Bottas, that’s this weekends debate non debate, last week he cut a corner and couldn’t accept it and now he got bailed out as usual, we know the top drivers tend to get a pass more often that the rest but this is not a debatable block, only thing on his defence is that Bottas did another run.
Jay Menon (@jaymenon10)
29th October 2017, 1:41
He seemed pretty shocked that he lost all that grip. But I like what he said “this is not about Max”.
Sounds like Red Bull have no idea what went wrong. We all know he isn’t 1s slower than Max. Hope Red Bull find the answers tonight!
Ali
29th October 2017, 1:56
Confused between what went right and what went wrong
f12007v (@f1fan-2000)
29th October 2017, 2:29
If answers can be found overnight mercedes would have solved them in China
BaKano (@bakano)
29th October 2017, 7:12
I am surprised that he tried a warm-up lap in Q3 before the true flying lap. I commented on another article that I believed NOT doing it played a major role (since Max did it always) but it seems they did try it.
Max has been fastest on most occasions but this gap was really surprising.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
29th October 2017, 14:32
Well, he wasn’t the only one – Perez was 0.4 seconds off Ocon and he was probably pushing like a madman. The Saubers with the old Ferrari engine beat the Haas in the new engine.
We know the Mercedes was also having a half second handicap.
The deltas were also not right – I think Ocon and Hulk were much closer to pole than they normally would be.
Even Verstappen couldn’t get the tires to work in half the laps.
Just too many thing didn’t make sense but the qualifying battle between Verstappen and Vettel was fun to watch even though it was more of a crapshoot than a display of skill.