Ricciardo: Bad starts bother us the most

According to Daniel Ricciardo, and he agrees with Yuki Tsunoda, his teammate at Visa RB, the difficulties during the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix were mainly due to a bad start.

In the first seconds of the race, the Australian, who started from 9th position, let two rivals, Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg, lead – by the way, Tsunoda, who started seventh, also lost two positions.

As it is extremely difficult to overtake at Imola, Ricciardo spent the entire first part of the race behind Hulkenberg’s Haas, and this affected his entire subsequent race.

“I think everything could have turned out very differently if the start had gone better,” the Australian edition of Speedweek quotes Daniel. – When the track was clear for us, we showed good pace. I think that on a free track we can do laps one tenth, if not two tenths faster than Hulkenberg.”

Ricciardo started on medium tires and then made a fairly early pit stop, going for a set of hard tires on lap eleven, hoping to stay ahead of the German Haas driver through this tactic. However, the plan didn’t work: Nico came into the pits a few laps later and stayed ahead of Daniel. After which he lost ground to both Lance Stroll and Kevin Magnussen, finishing only 13th. Moreover, the Dane overtook him on the last lap.

“I think Haas just used an alternative tactic,” Ricciardo continued. – Kevin was already ahead of me when he braked for the 1st corner. But when I was behind Sargent in the middle stages of the race, we were of course much faster, but I could never match his Williams in the braking zone before the first corner.

Maybe Kevin’s tires were less worn, I don’t know, but it seems like it was a little easier for our rivals to overtake us than for us to overtake them.” Ricciardo also believes that the task was complicated by the not particularly effective performance of the Hard tires: “When I left the pits on the circuit, I did not feel that the tires really offered high-quality grip. The balance left a lot to be desired, although the hard tires still made it possible to complete laps at a more or less decent pace compared to the competitors.

But what bothers us most are the bad starts. I don’t know what the problem is, I didn’t feel like I did anything wrong. Everything seemed to be going well. But the launch procedure is affected by a lot of different nuances, and we’re figuring it all out right now.”