Daniel Ricciardo says he is "frustrated and fed up" with the amount of bad luck he has experienced in Formula 1 this season so far, in the wake of another problem during qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix
Ricciardo will start down in 15th place, whereas his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen will line up third, after he suffered a broken throttle actuator during Q2, which meant he was unable to set a timed lap.
"The good news is I don't have to take any penalties tomorrow," commented the Australia who was visibly annoyed after qualifying and was seen screaming inside his helmet. "Obviously the penalty was today, but it won't get worse.
"It was a throttle actuator. Basically it broke. As soon as I went on throttle I knew something was up. It sounded ugly, and then we tried to start it up — one of the bits was broken. I would've preferred it happened in practice or something.
"It's a French [Renault] thing. I think it's just a manufacturing, just a part. It's a piece about eight millimetres or something thick. It kind of just broke. Apparently they take a beating. I haven't seen it, but I guess it probably just snapped off or something."
It comes after last weekend's Russian GP where Ricciardo started in 18th place after taking on engine and gearbox penalties. In fact, Ricciardo hasn't started inside the top four since the Chinese Grand Prix and has started outside the top ten four times in the last six races.
"I can't really [believe it], because even if I go back to Monaco, I got the result, but if you forget what my result was, I had a lot of bad luck on that Sunday. It nearly went. I did have bad luck, but I didn't, because it still got me home, so I kind of feel even Monaco wasn't that smooth.
"I was just sitting with my engineer before and we really struggled to think of a smooth weekend we've had from start to finish. I don't want it to come across all negative, but I think it's just more that we've had a really unlucky one. I don't really know why.
"Obviously I'm frustrated and fed up, but I'm not going to let it get the best of me, I'm just going to keep trying an believe it will eventually turn around — hopefully at some point this year."
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