Ricciardo “disheartened” as soft tyre gamble backfires

Daniel Ricciardo says he chose to attempt his final qualifying run on the soft compound tyres because he felt it was the better option.

Ricciardo joined the two Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen by choosing the soft tyres for the final run, ultimately ending the session in sixth place, three tenths of a second off Lewis Hamilton’s pole time.

The Red Bull driver made his first Q3 run on super-soft tyres, but explains that he felt that was not the best choice for him.

“In Q3, I think we both put in a strong lap on the super-softs which wasn’t, I don’t think, our preferred tyre,” says Ricciardo.

“I think that just the way the car’s feeling this weekend, I thought we were more comfortable on the softs. That’s why I went for that tyre in the second part of Q3.”

Red Bull locked out the third row on the grid for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix having been unable to challenge Mercedes and Ferrari for pole position. Ricciardo’s team mate Max Verstappen beat him to fifth on the grid by just 0.002s.

“They put in some belters in the end,” Ricciardo says.

“It’s a little bit disheartening, because I don’t really know what I could’ve done more with what we had. With the laps we put in, I thought we would’ve been a couple tenths from pole, not sixth tenths. That gap is a little bit not so nice.

“And then the two one-thosandths of a gap [to Verstappen], yeah, that’s not nice either. But that’s what it is.”

2018 F1 season

• McLaren staff told us we were “totally crazy” to take Honda engines in 2018 – Tost
• ‘It doesn’t matter if we start last’: How Red Bull’s junior team aided Honda’s leap forward
• Honda’s jet division helped F1 engineers solve power unit problem
• McLaren Racing losses rise after Honda split
• Ricciardo: Baku “s***show” was Red Bull’s fault