Emilia Romagna GP: McLaren risking Q2 knockout in F1 qualifying as per Daniel Ricciardo

Emilia Romagna GP: McLaren risking Q2 knockout in F1 qualifying as per Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo

After a strong statement being delivered at Bahrain GP, Team McLaren was expected to deliver the same at Emilia Romagna GP as well. But ever since both their drivers have taken the track, the hype seems to have died down. Especially Daniel Ricciardo as he did not seem in a swift spot driving the McLaren 2021 challenger. 

While the last year’s podium-getter, Daniel Ricciardo ended FP1 in P10, FP2 was much worse, as he could only manage P18. On the other hand, Lando Norris replicated a similar outing on Friday with P13 in FP1 and P8 in FP2. This led Ricciardo to opinionated of the work left to be done in the garage for McLaren before the race at Emilia Romagna GP gets going. 

What did Daniel Ricciardo say? 

As reported by PlanetF1, Ricciardo admitted that McLaren were far from expectations in terms of pace throughout Friday in the Emilia Romagna GP’s practice session. 

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“We’ll work tonight. We’ve got our engineering debrief in a few minutes. So, yeah, I think we’ll spend a fair bit of time trying to figure out what we were missing today,” Daniel Ricciardo stated. 

“I think, to comfortably put ourselves in Q3 tomorrow, we do need to make some changes. We’re not really there yet. 

“Saying that, it’s a cool track. I still had fun. But obviously, I want to find some competitiveness.” 

To add to McLaren’s woes, their threats, AlphaTauri and Ferrari have looked in red hot form. Pierre Gasly, in particular, has been hitting the targets with ease and has stuck right behind the Mercedes duo throughout the afternoon, ending both the sessions in P4 and P3, respectively. The McLaren driver is aware that Imola offers little to no room for overtakes. Hence, the qualifying session will be possessing a much bigger priority than usual. 

“It is really tricky to overtake here. And we can’t afford to put ourselves too far in the pack after tomorrow afternoon,” Daniel Ricciardo added. 

He concluded, “So yeah, it’s all well and good maybe being a bit quicker on high fuel. But we certainly tonight – at least from my side, it’s definitely all the focus on one-lap performance.” 

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