Daniel Ricciardo, Racing Bull Formula 1 driver, doesn’t want the team to revert the upgrades. He maintains that it is unnecessary at this time to undo upgrades prior to complete and thorough investigation.
RB team had rough ride at Spanish Grand Prix, which left the team shocked over “really strange” drop in performance.
Racing Bulls F1 team brought major upgrade at the Barcelona. It included major aerodynamic changes through new rear wing, sidepods, engine covers and a new profile to floor.
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The team expected strong results among the mide field through these upgrades, especially after surpassing Aston Martin.
Unfortunately, it went sideways when the car VCARB01 performance went downwards. Both drivers, Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda, couldn’t keep up with anyone in FP1 and finished 17th and 18th on grid.
RB drivers struggled to make any impact during the race and had to finish without points. Ricciardo managed to finish on 15 place behind Lance Stroll.
RB ccouldn’t identify the issue and speculated around the new upgrade. The team doesn’t have time with triple header around to work arouns the issue. But Ricciardo believes the team shall continue with same upgrades.
“I think that temptation probably only exists in maybe in 72 hours,” Ricciardo said. “If we’re still unsure or there’s no clear answer then maybe we say: ‘Okay. do we just for the time being go back?’
“But right now I’m not there yet to resort to that. Once we put everything on the table, if we’re still like that, then that probably becomes a question.”
What is most puzzling to Ricciardo is that he actually felt pretty comfortable in the car, and he didn’t think he and his team had left much on the table with the car package that was available.
“It was a really, really strange weekend for us to have dropped off so much,” the Australian explained.
“I didn’t have a bad feeling in qualifying. In the debrief Yuki and myself both felt we did good laps, we felt like the balance wasn’t bad.
“I think simply lacked the load and we probably don’t really get everything out of the new package.
“Honestly I felt good in the race. I was happy with what I got out of it, but 15th is not something that we can be happy about.
“I’ve got plenty of notes and feedback from the race. The next 48-72 hours [we have] lots of things to look at.”
Tsunoda finished another 25 seconds behind Ricciardo in 19th – only ahead of a struggling Logan Sargeant in the Williams – and did feel there was something fundamentally wrong with his car in the race.
“There was a clear issue in the beginning and for sure that was compromised a little bit, for especially second stint,” said the Japanese driver.
“We were able to solve it at least in steering, but I’m not sure it was fixed completely because I was feeling so weird inside the car.
“The pace was nowhere, I struggled with the balance, everything. For sure there was something wrong going on there.
“In qualifying the balance was okay, but just too much sliding and I didn’t feel much downforce.”
