Down 14 positions. Ricciardo thinks he had the same problems as Norris a day earlier – F1sport.cz

Ricciardo finished fourth in the shootout. A day later he finished 18th in qualifying.

Ricciardo did not make it out of the first part of qualifying and took the final 18th position. With regard to the penalty from China (overtaking under SC), he will start the race from the last place.

According to Ricciardo, his situation was at first glance similar to that of Lando Norris in the final part of the shootout. On the medium compound, Norris was fastest in the first two sections. But in the last one, the riders have to put on the soft and Norris got significantly worse.

“I don’t know what he said after that, but I saw his bike and he was going a lot slower on the soft. Already on the exit of the first corner you could see him sliding, and it was a mess. That’s honestly how I felt too.’

“I didn’t feel like the second set of tires gave me what I would typically expect from a soft tire. I felt we were kind of handicapped. We don’t have an answer as to why that was.’

“I’m not sure if Lando had an answer yesterday, but I honestly felt his pain. But the strange thing was that it started already at the beginning of the round.”

When asked by RacingNews365 how he felt overall, having given him a confidence-boosting sprint result a few hours earlier, he said: “It’s frustrating. It’s not about changing the car and doing something different and saying ‘Damn! We shouldn’t have done this.'”

“That lap time is in that car. I don’t know what happened to that set of tires. It’s a bit of a ho*** because there’s no facts behind it, but you feel it when it’s not giving you what you want, so it’s frustrating.”

“Going back, this morning was great. I told the team, ‘Let’s enjoy it for 30 minutes so we don’t forget it’.”

“Obviously I didn’t expect it in the qualifiers, but you never know, this sport is very interesting and it can change very quickly.”

According to Ricciardo, his engineer was equally confused, so they will have to look into the situation further.

“Today I was in the second row and tomorrow I will be the last. I’m upset about it, but I know it’s not something we screw up. It was just an unfortunate part of the weekend.’