Ricciardo: I lose the most in the first sector

In Imola, Daniel Ricciardo reached the final of the main weekend qualifying for the first time this season (in Miami he showed an excellent 4th result in the sprint qualifying), and tomorrow he will start from 9th position in the Grand Prix of Emilia-Romagna. But his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, was faster again, completing the lap in the decisive attempt with a 7th fastest time.

By the way, Visa RB became one of the four teams that reached the final session with full force.

Daniel Ricciardo (9th): “I’m very happy for our team, because we both made it to the qualifying final, but personally I did better this session than the previous one, although the 9th time is still not good enough. But in my opinion we are moving forward, even though I had more problems than my partner. Yuki has been more comfortable behind the wheel since the start of the weekend and is happy with his car. I also tried to improve every lap, but the first sector is still the part of the circle where I have the most problems. This is where I lose, but tonight we will try to understand the reasons for this better, so I have something to work on.

But overall we are in a good position. I’m happy with how the car behaves in the remaining parts of the lap. so I just need to understand how to improve in the first sector. We’ve made some improvements, but it’s still not enough to compete with the guys ahead of us.

If we talk about tomorrow, we will start the race from the first half of the grid, and that is good, so we will try to finish in the top ten. This is a home leg for our team, so it would be nice if we both earn points tomorrow. In general, we have to do everything we can!”

Yuki Tsunoda (7th): “My congratulations to the team and also to Daniel! We showed how fast our car is, and I believe everyone working in our team is putting in even more effort than we can imagine. We should definitely thank them all!

We didn’t expect to be able to reach such a high pace, but the team is doing everything they can to modernize the car and it’s paying off because the equipment works perfectly and consistently allows us to achieve good results to fight.

Many new specialists joined the team, so it took a while for everyone to get along, but now we work very efficiently and don’t make any mistakes. The team really deserves these results and I really appreciate being given such a fast car, especially at my home circuit where many Visa RB staff are in the stands.

To be honest, I’m personally not completely satisfied because I wasn’t able to show the best possible result in the qualifying final, but I think everything went pretty well so far.

My laps in the last session weren’t ideal, I could have done them faster, so I was a bit upset. But this week everything has been going pretty well so far, so tomorrow we have to try to give everything and perform as best as we can.”