Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo wanted to go with a more 'aggressive' aerodynamic set-up for qualifying ahead of the French Grand Prix but was unable to test it out in third practice after heavy rain interrupted the session.
In an effort to try and find the right set-up ahead of the race, the Australian stated there was a set-up difference between himself and team-mate Max Verstappen ahead of FP3 in order to try something different against their nearest rivals.
As a swift microburst came across the circuit in the opening minutes of the session it spoiled their chances of any solid preparation time prior to qualifying.
"We split the cars yesterday, downforce levels," said Ricciardo. "Max went low, I was higher. We were pretty evenly matched yesterday but it looked like the low was worth trying for sure.
"Put that on to try it out in FP3. Didn’t get to try it because of the weather so then we were like – do we jump into qualifying with something we haven’t run yet. We decided to go with what we ran yesterday with and we know.
"We still had a lot of front wing in hand. More downforce, you’re going to understeer and you’ll need more front wing but at the end of Q1, we had already used every bit of front wing we had and still had understeer. We were a bit slow on the straights but we couldn’t balance it."
With the Paul Ricard circuit suiting cars with more power than aerodynamic strength due to the length of the Mistral straight despite being split up, Red Bull was forced into trying a different set-up in order to try and minimalize their power deficit to Ferrari and Mercedes.
When pressed about who's decision it was for Verstappen's car to be the one to try the low downforce configuration, the Australian added: "They tried it. I kept the same all weekend.
"His FP1 wasn’t that good. They had a few issues. He actually had more downforce in FP1 so they said alright, let’s take it all off and see. I think after yesterday afternoon, they were great, this is the only good session we had so let’s keep it.
"It was the same for us. We didn’t get the running with FP3, let’s go with what we know. I decided that with my engineer and I guess he decided with his. If we did FP3, we probably would have gone for the lower but it was unknown."
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