Daniel Ricciardo moans over the really sad Spanish Grand Prix

McLaren was one of several teams who brought enhancements to Barcelona, but Daniel Ricciardo wasn't able to bank on it.

Daniel Ricciardo in a file photo. (Image: Twitter/McLaren)
By Niranjan Shivalkar | May 23, 2022 | 2 Min Read follow icon Follow Us

Daniel Ricciardo qualified in Q3 on Saturday, but steadily dropped back in the order as he battled to find speed on Sunday, eventually finishing outside the points in 12th, while teammate Lando Norris found it easier, battling tonsillitis and rising to P8. The Australian was perplexed as to what went wrong for him on Sunday, and he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t turn on his tyres in the same manner others could.

Lacked grip and pace 

Daniel Ricciardo admitted it was a really sad race in Barcelona on Sunday, and struggled to find pace throughout the Spanish Grand Prix. “Yeah, I wasn’t there from the start. And it wasn’t it wasn’t like I had understeer, I mean, I did, but it was just an overall lack of grip. I thought at the start of the race, it was very, very slow. I thought, okay, maybe, I don’t know, temperatures just got too high or something with the tires. We did a three-stop race, so I have four sets of tires today and was very, very slow and all of them so not sure. Really, really sad race.” expressed the Aussie driver. 

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The weekend of upgrades

McLaren was one of several teams who brought enhancements to Barcelona during the weekend, but Ricciardo was unable to take advantage of the alterations made to the MCL36. He stated that he had no idea where his difficulties were, leaving him with a big deficit to people around him at times. “Everyone obviously came in the weekend curious, you know, for how they’re going to perform,” he said. “And yeah, it’s one of those races that it was so slow that you kind of nearly, it sounds bad to say, but like, I mean, you hope that something was wrong.” said the Mclaren driver. 

“Like you hope that we find something that is like, ‘oh, that’s why’ – because [it’s] probably more concerning if we don’t because, as I said, it wasn’t like a tenth or two tenths off, it felt like over a second at times. I don’t know that for a fact, but I certainly saw the cars pass me and pull away very quickly.”  expressed Ricciardo. 

The next race on the F1 calendar is the mighty Monaco on 29 May.