“I'm asking the engineers lots of questions”: Daniel Ricciardo reflects on areas to improve after finishing P12 in home race

Daniel Ricciardo claimed that he had been introspecting his own driving as well as asking the right questions to the team, after his struggle for pace during the Australian GP weekend.

Speaking on the F1TV post race show, the RB driver felt his teammate Yuki Tsunoda was more comfortable in the car than him. After a deficit in qualifying performance for three weekends in a row, Ricciardo believed there may be elements both him and the team could continue to work on.

Asked where he could extract more potential from the car like Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo explained:

“Yeah I think it's a two -part process now. I think there's obviously I look as much as I can into myself, into data, into on boards, how I'm driving, what's making me do certain things and then is that self -induced or is that a reason, is that something coming from the car which isn't giving me the feeling I want? So then, yeah, and then I'm asking the engineers lots of questions, you know, 'cause the car is pretty much the same as last year. Obviously it's a different car, but it's not that we changed the whole philosophy and the handling, the characteristics are fairly similar.”

He added:

“So I think that's why we're probably a little bit, maybe, unsure why we are struggling so much and obviously Yuki's certainly very comfortable with it, because it's yeah, it's pretty similar. So keep working I'm trying to get them to go around the car with the magnifying glass as well make sure nothing's obviously nothing's off. As a driver you yeah you put everything you can into it. But you want to ask as many questions as possible and make sure that's yeah we're we got everything as it should. So we'll I'm sure we'll find something and keep keep our head keep our head straight and keep keep our eyes on the prize I guess.”

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Jack Doohan empathised with Daniel Ricciardo on his tough race in Australia

Alpine reserve driver Jack Doohan believes that Daniel Ricciardo would have had a different race if his lap time was not deleted during Q1 of qualifying on Saturday.

Doohan felt that it is often difficult for an audience to understand the struggle of surging through the field after starting from the back of the grid. He felt that a points finish could have been possible given the incident filled race it transpired to be.

Empathising with his fellow Australian, Doohan said in a conversation with Ricciardo on F1TV:

“If yesterday's lap obviously had stood, it would have been a completely different race today just not being in a top team. Starting at the back spending X amount of two laps behind a car that you don't want to. Like you said struggling with that graining. Unfortunately, you know, you still went forward. But to get into points, it's just so difficult and so hard. People don't understand from the outside that one lap, two laps you spend struggling to get past that car in front, just didn't be completely ruined, you know, in a blink of an eye. So I did feel for you.”

Daniel Ricciardo is yet to score his first points of the 2024 season after an unusually slow start. His teammate Yuki Tsunoda crossed the finish line in eighth after George Russell crashed out on the final lap, but was promoted to seventh after Fernando Alonso got penalised. The RB team are now sixth in the championship with six points to their tally.