Istanbul thriller "not the answer" for Formula 1 - Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo

Istanbul thriller "not the answer" for Formula 1 - Ricciardo

Australian knows entertainment was good but F1 short changed

Ian Parkes

Thursday 19 November 2020 16:04

Daniel Ricciardo believes further races like the Turkish Grand Prix would prove to be "a robbery" for Formula 1 regardless of the entertainment value.

Ricciardo departed the Istanbul Park circuit lamenting what at times was a farcical weekend for F1 given the conditions as a newly resurfaced track in tandem with rain during qualifying and immediately ahead of the race played havoc.

From the perspective of an armchair fan, the entertainment value in seeing drivers fighting to keep their cars on track in the extreme low-grip conditions was naturally high.

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But from Renault driver Ricciardo's viewpoint, the unpredictable circumstances are "not the answer" for F1.

"Don’t get me wrong - and I knew everyone sitting on the couch was going to have a fun and exciting one to watch - but to be honest, I don’t know if we learned anything from the weekend because we will probably never come to a situation with this level of grip [again]," said Ricciardo.

“When teams are spending so much money developing cars and putting all of the knowledge into designing the fastest race cars in the world, not being able to use them feels like a little bit of a - not at the weekend because it was a bit of an anomaly - but if it was all the time, it would feel like a robbery.

“It’s like, why are we putting so much time into these cars if we can’t actually push the limits? So, from a driver and a technical point of view, that is how I would answer it. We didn’t really get to push an F1 car at the weekend.

“Sure, it made it tricky and exciting, but it was hard to get a lot of satisfaction out of it from a driving point of view."

The race was a late addition to the calendar as F1 battled to salvage a season ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

After a nine-year absence, and as the track had never been resurfaced since it opened in 2005, the owners opted to upgrade in the hope of underlining its status as one of the best circuits in the world, leading to the resurfacing taking place just 10 days before first practice.

Ricciardo is hoping other track owners will have learned a lesson never to follow the lead of the Turkish GP organisers.

“I obviously sympathise," added Ricciardo. "It’s a last-minute calendar so I don’t want to go too hard on them but I don’t recommend they resurface tracks like this a month before we come here.”

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