Daniel Ricciardo is hoping to carry Renault’s strong Friday form at Spa-Francorchamps further into the Belgian Grand Prix weekend and secure a top-six starting position for Sunday’s race.
The Australian enjoyed a mostly positive opening day of running in Belgium on Friday, ending the second practice session second on the timesheet, only trailing former Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen by 0.048s.
However, his session ended prematurely, as a hydraulics issue forced him to pull to the side of the circuit late on. Ricciardo confirmed that the stoppage was precautionary, as the team did not want to risk further damage to the car.
Speaking after the session, Ricciardo revealed he was not surprised to hear he had managed to jump into second place after his hot lap on the soft tyres.
“The lap today, I don’t know I just felt like the car was really hooked up on that lap, I wasn’t surprised when Karel [Loos, race engineer] said we were P2,” Ricciardo said.
“I honestly thought it would be around top three, top four. It felt good, even sometimes you can kid yourself when you see the lap times and your like ‘yeah, the car felt good when it wasn’t’, but it certainly did.”
Ricciardo’s best qualifying result so far this year is fifth place at Barcelona – and the 31-year-old is aiming to produce another strong performance tomorrow to get inside the top six for the start of Sunday’s grand prix.
“Let’s still be realistic,” he said. “Let’s aim for a top six or something, that’ll be a great result for us in quali.
“Today showed we got pace, I’m not sure we can hold P2. But I think we’re still going to be in a good position tomorrow and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t… we’ll focus on that, take positive and focus on getting Q3 tomorrow.”
Team-mate Esteban Ocon also ended FP2 inside the top 10, recording a lap time that was four-tenths slower than Ricciardo’s, slotting him into eighth place at the chequered flag.
