Daniil Kvyat has admitted that he does not understand his recent poor form, following another frustrating qualifying session today in Hockenheim.
The Toro Rosso driver exited qualifying for the German Grand Prix in the first session, and will start P19 after a lap at that stage was half a second slower than that of his team-mate Carlos Sainz.
His frustration was also heard on the team radio which was broadcast on the world TV feed, with the Russian saying variously that it was "unbelievable" and asking "what the f**k is going on?". He later expressed similar frustration in TV interviews.
Speaking later Kvyat reflected on his difficult qualifying. "Little bit of a crazy lap, with many mistakes…I was expecting to be out of Q1," he said.
"I don't feel great, it's not a good period for me and it seems like it's never-ending now. I'm trying every weekend…but nothing is working so far.
"It's not like I'm having the most pleasant time in the world, it's not easy but it's not an excuse."
When asked about comments he had made on TV that he needed more than the impending summer break to improve, he said "I don't know what I need, I don't know. I just need that feeling from the car. If it comes back I should be much better.
"I don't know what's going on. It seems like my window of working is very narrow, I need to work on expanding it, but it's not easy."
Kvyat also admitted that he is not sure specifically what is costing him laptime: "It's a bit of everything. I cannot just say it's just understeer or it's just oversteer. No it's a combination of things, it's different balance issues in different parts of corners that makes me lose confidence.
"We need to get a [good] race under our belts. We thought yesterday this could be the one, we found some good things yesterday but I'm not sure if this has played a little bit against us and made us a bit too relaxed today."
He was however hopeful that his solution was near at hand: "I feel like solutions are not far away, even if it looks really bad on paper, we had a good Friday yesterday for the first time in a while. So we need to look into that, tomorrow is the race, we need to try to fight our way back…the pace was not bad on Friday in the long runs.
"I have not much to lose anyway, so I'll just try to go for it tomorrow."