Daniel Ricciardo has labelled his RB team's performance at the Spanish Grand Prix as "strange".
Ricciardo and teammate Yuki Tsunoda struggled for pace all weekend at the Barcelona circuit. Both were bundled out in the first part of qualifying, and neither were ever in contention for points in the race.
Having started 18th, Ricciardo did well to climb three spots to finish 15th in the race. Tsunoda endured a nightmare race and finished 19th, ahead only of the Williams of Logan Sargeant.
READ MORE: 'Aggressive' Verstappen booed after grand prix win
READ MORE: Racing legend in ICU after 'catastrophic' 500km/h crash
READ MORE: Aussie loses top spot after costly collision with teammate
After the race, Ricciardo was at a loss to explain the team's performance.
"From the beginning, from a competitiveness (perspective), we weren't there," he said.
"It was a really, really strange weekend for us, to have dropped off so much.
"My race today, honestly, I felt good. I was happy with the race, happy with what I got out of it, but yeah, 15th is not something that we can be happy about."
Off the back of his first grand prix points finish of the season last time out in Canada, a stack of fresh upgrades were bolted onto Ricciardo's car in Spain.
"We came here with high hopes for the upgrades that everyone back in the factory has worked so hard to design and produce as part of our aggressive development strategy," team boss Laurent Mekies said.
"Unfortunately, right from the start of free practice we were lacking pace in every session.
"There is no point denying this was a poor weekend for us and although the gaps were very small, there's no excuses for the fact we just weren't competitive."
Ricciardo said 15th was the best he could've managed.
"I don't want to say that makes everything better – it doesn't. But we need to move on," he said.
"I've got plenty of notes and feedback from the race to give to the team … (there's) lots of things to look at."
Ricciardo and Tsunoda both finished a lap behind race winner Max Verstappen.
Fortunately for Ricciardo, the Spanish race was the first of a gruelling triple-header, meaning he gets another chance at the Austrian Grand Prix next weekend, followed by the British Grand Prix a week later.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.