- Oct 4, 2016
- 7,425
- 11,674
- AFL Club
- Richmond
another poor effort and worrying he doesn't seem to have any answers. he's really off the pace. loathe the monaco gp. worst circuit by a mile.
Ricciardo baffled by Monaco mess: ‘I refuse to believe I’m that slow’
Daniel Ricciardo was left absolutely baffled in Monaco after another horror day saw him blown out of the water by his McLaren teammate.
There were always going to be teething problems in Daniel Ricciardo’s early days at McLaren but the Aussie and his new team are fast approaching crisis time after a disastrous qualifying result at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Ricciardo managed just the 12th fastest time at one of his fastest tracks and was once again far outperformed by teammate Lando Norris who qualified fifth behind pole-sitter Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.
‘I refuse to believe I’m that slow’
Ricciardo’s fastest lap of 1:11.598 was almost a full second slower than the time Norris laid down in the third qualifying session (1:10.620) and the Perth-born driver refused to believe he was solely responsible.
“I’m probably confused more than frustrated,” he said. “Obviously frustrated and upset, we know qualifying here is so big, but it’s probably got to a point where it’s not even the position now, it’s just we’ve been pretty much a second off all weekend.
“I’d like to say I’m just not confident or still need to learn the car but not a second, not around here.
“I’m certainly not being like, ‘Yeah, something is broken’, but I think we do have to have a look into maybe a bigger picture, because I refuse to believe I’m that slow around here.
“Obviously I’ve been around here with Max (Verstappen as teammate) — and I’m sure Lando’s fast — but I refuse to believe he’s a second quicker around here, and I don’t mean to say that against him.
“But just all weekend, even crossing the line a lot of laps I felt good, I was like that’s a good lap. And I think at one point I was 1.2 seconds slower than say what Lando had just done, so no answers at the moment.”
‘I’m sure the team will do a dig’
The 31-year-old didn’t believe Norris’ greater experience in the McLaren was the reason for his success either.
“I mean there is still a little bit of a difference in driving style and things like a bit of braking technique and that, and again even if I’m not optimising the car, I would still say OK maybe I’m two tenths slower or three tenths slower,” Ricciardo said.
“But the whole let’s say call it a second, I don’t know, it seems a lot. I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and be like, ‘Ah, fix it and I’m the best’.
“I still want to definitely work at it and I’m sure there is still things I can improve, but this weekend has been the biggest anomaly of them all so far.”