Daniel Ricciardo has revealed his mixed feelings after his qualifying performance, and said that there were positives and negatives to take away.
Ricciardo went seventh-fastest overall at the end of Q3. He finds himself between two Ferraris on Sunday, with teammate Lando Norris starting the race at the back of the grid. He is thus the main man for McLaren, and will need to fend off both the red cars.
After having gone through poor practice sessions, the Honey Badger bounced back to deliver when it mattered. He will have a grid position on the right side, and will look to take full advantage of it.
Ricciardo revealed his mixed feelings after his qualifying performance, and said that he was both happy and sad to sandwich the two Ferrari drivers.
“It’s a little bittersweet because obviously Carlos (Sainz) is two-milliseconds in front, but to split the Ferraris is not too bad around here,” he said, as quoted by f1i.com.
“We worked as a team well, with Lando giving me some help. I think the clean side of the grid should be okay tomorrow. I made a little mistake in Turn 13 which I think cost me sixth but the clean side of the grid isn’t a bad offset, so we’ll work with that.
“We did make improvements going into today, yesterday was tricky as we missed a lot of running. We hit the ground running and I think we have to be fairly pleased with P7. We’ll try to get a couple off the start tomorrow.”
Team effort
Lando Norris also gave his thoughts on McLaren’s qualifying, and said that he didn’t think they could do better.
“A good enough day, I don’t think there was a lot more we could do,” he said.
“We helped Daniel to get into the best position possible, which we achieved. We struggled a little bit with the car in general, but we’re still hopeful for a positive result.
“I think we can have a good race, but we’ll need to work hard tonight to give ourselves a good plan going into tomorrow,” he concluded.