After a promising Saturday, it was a Sunday to forget for Daniel Ricciardo at the Spanish Grand Prix, after a “really, really sad race” for the McLaren F1 driver.
Ricciardo finished the race at what was a scorching hot Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in twelfth, despite having qualified in ninth.
To add to the Australian’s woes, he was beaten by ill team-mate Lando Norris who finished eighth.
Norris was unwell all weekend in Spain, and McLaren later announced that Norris had been diagnosed with tonsillitis, momentarily throwing his participation in this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix into doubt.
Ricciardo had been hoping for a strong race, after McLaren introduced a number of upgrades in Barcelona, all of which were working as expected by the team.
The 32-year-old complained of having no grip all race, despite having used four sets of tyres.
When talking to the media afterwards, Ricciardo was clearly upset in what was a dire Sunday afternoon.
“It wasn’t a good race today. I’d love to find something positive, but it was just a struggle from the start,” said the McLaren driver.
“I was slow, and I simply had a lot less grip than everyone else around me.
“With the three stops, we had four chances on different sets of tyres, but we didn’t have the pace on any of them. I’m not really sure why, to be honest, so we’ll try to have a look and understand it.
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“(I was) was very, very slow on all of (the tyres), so not sure how,”
“Really, really sad race.”
With no faults with his McLaren being announced as of yet, Ricciardo is seriously hoping something is discovered after finding cars “pull away very quickly” from him.
“It’s one of those races that it was so slow that you kind of, nearly sounds bad to say, but you hope that something was wrong,” Ricciardo continued.
“You hope that we find something that is like, ‘oh, that’s why’, because probably more concerning if we don’t.
“It wasn’t like a tenth or two tenths (of a second) off. It felt like over a second at times.
“I don’t know that for a fact but I certainly saw the cars pass me and pull away very quickly.”
McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl also appeared frustrated after the race, after being equally unable to pinpoint why the Australian struggled for grip.
“Obviously disappointed with how the race on Daniel’s car went,” said Seidl.
“(It’s) something we need to understand because all the tyre sets we fitted today he simply struggled with grip compared to all the other cars around him.”