In Austin, Daniel Ricciardo returned behind the wheel of an AlphaTauri car for the first time after an injury he suffered during training in Zandvoort at the end of August. In qualifying for Saturday’s sprint, he set the 11th fastest time, after which he apologized to the team via radio.
When asked why he did it, the Australian replied cheerfully: “To be honest I was happy with the way I did the lap, but it’s a bit of a joke that we run into in our team.
This is only my third qualification with AlphaTauri, although I have of course been following the team all season and it seems that eleventh is their favorite position this year. Yuki showed the 11th result yesterday, I showed the 11th result today.
Of course we aim to qualify for the final. Considering the capabilities of our car, this can already be considered a great achievement, but if we fall just a little bit short, it will be very disappointing. In general, for us there is nothing worse than 11th position! This can be compared to second place in a race, as it is believed that whoever took it is the first loser.
I’m actually happy that I’ve made steady progress since the first qualifying session. After yesterday we could no longer change the car’s settings, but we tried to analyze the information collected on Friday, as we can slightly adjust the balance of the car with switches on the steering wheel, including brake balance, differential control parameters, etc.
I think this allowed us to make some progress and today I attacked with more confidence.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
