Daniel Ricciardo remarked that he hopes RB discover a “big hole” in his Formula 1 car to explain his struggles to extract pace during last weekend’s British Grand Prix.
Ricciardo was aiming to build upon an encouraging drive to ninth in Austria, but he lamented being uncompetitive in all conditions Silverstone as he came home 13th.
The Australian’s endeavours experienced a setback when he bemoaned RB not optimising his run plan in Q2 as he qualified with the slowest time in the second stage.
Ricciardo’s prospects were dealt another noticeable blow when an unscheduled engine change prior to the race start meant he was down on power with an older unit.
However, Ricciardo was at a loss to pinpoint his lacklustre pace through the weekend, despite conceding that RB has lost ground to its rivals in the development race.
“Compromised is a polite way of saying it,” he expressed. “Hopefully, there’s a big hole in my car that I haven’t yet seen and that is the reason why we’re really slow.
“But yeah, we honestly just, as a team for sure, we struggle here.
“You know, like looking at the Williams at the end on that stint and [Logan] Sargeant pulled away from me and I believe [Alex] Albon came and passed [Yuki] Tsunoda.
“Yes, Yuki got a point, he did well. But I think as a team we weren’t very competitive this weekend. I certainly struggled more in the race. I’m still not completely sure why.
“There was moments my engineer was telling me I think I was about eight-tenths off and I was quite surprised to hear that because I felt like I just crossed the line and did a good lap.
“So yeah, a little bit probably lost in terms of where that pace lies.
“I felt like definitely moments where there was mixed conditions, there was a few laps where I was… Yeah, I didn’t put in maybe the best handful of laps in those mixed conditions.
“But then let’s say fast forwarding to the end or even the start where it was dry.
“Struggled for sure grip and balance, but I think these circuits have exposed us a little bit and the other teams have made some good updates and that’s also reality.
“And why I struggled more than… I would say for the most part more than Yuki today, yeah, I’ll try and have a look.
“But as always, I make notes during the race and share them with the team now and try to understand why I felt what I felt.”
Ricciardo has reiterated that he was satisfied with the balance on his VCARB 01 in the race, prompting him to suspect that RB is lacking aero load against other cars.
But with team-mate Tsunoda racing to 10th spot to collect a single point, the ex-Red Bull driver has admitted that his side of the RB garage didn’t maximise its hopes.
“So I remember a little bit where I was struggling with the lap time, trying to find it,” he explained.
“I think my engineer asked me, ‘What am I missing? What do I need?’
“And I felt like, yeah, I was saying like the balance and stuff was actually OK. You just feel like we’re just lacking load, you know.
“So that’s why when I heard the lap times of the others, I was quite confused because I said I did the lap and the lap felt pretty clean. A few little things, but felt decent.
“Like I was close to the potential of the car. And that’s when I was like, I don’t really have an answer right now where this lap time is.
“So yeah, I was just sort of saying, watching the other cars in front, I felt, yeah, the high speed, they were really able to pull away a little bit more.
“So probably my explanation of having, you know, we’re lacking a bit of load. But yeah, obviously downforce is king, but I think there’s still things we missed today.
“Or my assumption is we missed some things just with our car and optimising it. So yeah, we have to, looking forward, make everything better.
“But right now with what we have, try to probably still with set-up, there’s maybe a couple of things myself and the team are maybe not quite grasping. So we’ll keep at it.”
