Ricciardo mystified by lack of Red Bull pace

Ricciardo mystified by lack of Red Bull pace

Joas van Wingerden

Saturday 15 September 2018 17:59

Daniel Ricciardo was baffled after a failure to improve through qualifying left him facing a sixth-place start at the Singapore Grand Prix. Max Verstappen suffered from power unit issues throughout Saturday and it seems that Ricciardo might also have run into technical trouble at Marina Bay.

Ricciardo was six tenths off Verstappen's pace – despite the Dutchman suffering a loss of power all the way through to Q3.

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The Australian has scored podiums in all four of his races at Singapore for Red Bull, but expects matching that feat will be difficult – barring more 2017-style chaos – after a Saturday to forget.

"We had a little bit of an issue but that's not the reason why we dropped off so much pace," he told Sky Sports.

QUALIFYING CLASSIFICATION: @LewisHamilton blows the opposition away #SingaporeGP ???????? #F1 pic.twitter.com/EwxMLph2H7 — Formula 1 (@F1) September 15, 2018

"We were there, made changes after FP3 and after Q1 it felt like we were there and could run with it, but we just stayed as a stalemate and I don't really know why.

"Right now I'm struggling to let qualifying go. Even with good pace it is so tricky to overtake, all we can hope for is the cars in front their tyres fall off and have to do two stops. I feel like you don't always get answers with race cars and today is one of those days.

"It fell away in the space of an hour and we don't know why. I'm a little bit emotional, I want to figure out and understand why we lost out so much."