Daniel Ricciardo "rage" at F3 qualifying "mess"

Daniel Ricciardo

Riccardo "rage" at F3 qualifying "mess"

Traffic was a huge problem in the 30-car session

Sam Hall

Friday 4 September 2020 20:10 Updated: 20:24

Daniel Ricciardo watched qualifying for Formula 3 "with some rage" as the 30-car junior series delivered a farce of a session on Friday.

Following a chaotic Q3 for Formula 1 at Monza in 2019, race director Michael Masi notified teams a minimum lap time will be in force across Saturday to prevent drivers from lapping dangerously slowly on out laps.

In F3 no such regulation or directive was in place, and the session descended into a mess that had Ricciardo watching with anger.

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"I watched the F3 qualifying earlier and it was a mess," said the Renault driver.

"I think probably 10 drivers should get penalties for that so I was like, I was even watching with some rage, but it was a bit of a mess."

Monza qualifying™️

30 cars. One Track. #ItalianGP ?? #F3 pic.twitter.com/MlEnJz8bmb
— Formula 3 (@FIAFormula3) September 4, 2020

Ricciardo is not expecting F1 to produce similar chaos as in F3 or last year, and that the minimum lap time will have an effect. He added: "I think we'll be a bit more sensible.

"I think as well, most of us go out on the same lap so it's really just trying to figure out before the last corner, but then on the timed lap, it should be okay.

"We'll be alright. I think they've applied a minimum speed or something for the out laps to try to not cause too many bottlenecks, but I think it's going to be fun tomorrow."

The FIA is also continuing its crackdown on the abuse of track limits at Monza, with drivers required to stay between the right lines. A total of 45 laps were deleted during Friday's two practice sessions.

Special attention is being paid to the lap-ending sweep of the Parabolica where Ricciardo lost his best time of a one minute 20.905secs for running narrowly wide that would have been good enough for third quickest behind Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

Instead, Ricciardo ended the day 15th with a time more than a second slower, albeit on the medium-compound tyre.

"Keeping it in the white lines, it's honestly not so difficult," added Ricciardo. "Today you don't really have much to lose so you try to push a little more and figure out where the limit is.

"I think, the last corner, I can't see that being an issue in qualifying."

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