Daniel Ricciardo opens up about finishing 23 seconds behind Yuki Tsunoda at Spa

Yuki Tsunoda scored his first point since April, while Ricciardo is yet to score his first points after two races.

Daniel Ricciardo opens up about finishing 23 seconds behind Yuki Tsunoda at Spa

Daniel Ricciardo (Credits: Auto Action) and Yuki Tsunoda (Credits: Sports Illustrated)

Daniel Ricciardo’s much-anticipated comeback is not going how he must have imagined it. While Ricciardo has shown some promising moments, he has been outplayed by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda when it matters. Ricciardo finished 16th in Belgium on Sunday, while Tsunoda finished tenth. After the race, Ricciardo discussed the big gap between him and his teammate.

The teams had only one practice session for the weekend, which too, was interrupted by rain. Due to this, all the teams went into the race without knowledge about the circuit and their car’s adaptability. In AlphaTauri, while Ricciardo suffered, Tsunoda had an admirable race as he managed to get a point. He got his point by overtaking his former teammate Pierre Gasly in his Alpine in the final stages of the race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOx73yj4xU

There were also talks of Ricciardo replacing Tsunoda as AlphaTauri’s first driver, but Tsunoda’s run in Belgium shows that he is not willing to give up on it. When Daniel Ricciardo was asked about the gap between him and Tsunoda in Belgium, he appreciated his teammate by telling motorsport, “I saw that Yuki was tenth, so it looks like he had a decent race. I’ll try to learn from that as well.”

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Daniel Ricciardo’s honest opinion on AlphaTauri’s AT04

Daniel Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo (Credits: F1GrandPrix)

Daniel Ricciardo had a disastrous run in Belgium. With a P19 finish in the qualifying to P16 in the final race on Sunday, Ricciardo once again went through a weekend without any points to his name, while Tsunoda showed a great run by finishing P10. After the race, Ricciardo talked about what held him back.

Ricciardo said that the AT04 was missing a lot of pace and grip. He also believes that a lack of familiarity with his car was a major factor in his disappointing result. Despite this, Ricciardo is not too discouraged by the results and is looking to learn more about the car and return with a better performance.

“I felt limited in terms of pace. Even in free air, I struggled mightily. We probably just weren’t producing enough grip. It was our only dry session of the whole weekend, so it could have been something easy with the set-up. We went the wrong way. I just hoped I could have attacked a bit more,” Ricciardo told Crash.

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