Ricciardo Frustrated But Finds Positives After Near Q3 Miss in Austria

Daniel Ricciardo is frustrated he couldn’t get into the top ten shootout in qualifying for the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix but is pleased with the progress Visa Cash App RB have made throughout the weekend.

It was a difficult Sprint qualifying and race for Ricciardo, who has come into the weekend hoping for another good result after beating his teammate at the last two races. It’s also important for Ricciardo to perform this weekend because of comments made by Dr. Helmut Marko about his future with RB, with the Oracle Red Bull Racing team advisor keen to give Liam Lawson a chance in a full-time race seat.

After a poor Spanish Grand Prix for the team as a whole, with an upgrade package not working as intended, another disappointing weekend of performance was likely, especially if you consider the evidence from the Sprint, but major changes in setup has helped both drivers find more performance, particularly Ricciardo. The 34-year-old was just +0.015s away from reaching Q3 and qualified ahead of his teammate too.

Speaking to F1TV, Ricciardo said he frustrated but also thinks there are positives to take considering their Sprint performance.

He said: “It’s frustration of course, but I would say there’s two types of frustration and this ones more of a positive because for us to be disappointed with just missing out on Q3 by virtually nothing, I think we made a lot of progress since yesterday.

“Obviously this time yesterday we were out in SQ1 so small margins, but you’re going to get this around this circuit – it’s such a short lap time. Frustrated, that one hurts but we’re at least in the fight today and that’s something we have to be proud about.”

“It puts us in a much better position. We changed the car a lot yesterday and having that one set of tyres in SQ1 yesterday was going to make it tricky but today we had a little bit more time to get used to the changes and I feel like every lap we did we were more or less there, but I’m happier – putting a string of laps together.”

Photo: Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

Ricciardo and his teammate Yuki Tsunoda are using different cars, with a split on specs with new and old components, to allow RB to get to the bottom of their sudden performance slump. 

Speaking to MotorsportWeek, the Australian confirmed that they were still running two different car specifications, and hoped that they have a good chance to score points in the full race on Sunday following the major setup changes.

“Yes, it’s a concoction. From the Sprint race this morning, we did a bit more fine-tuning and I feel like the car was in a better place.

“Obviously, I hope that that means a good thing for tomorrow, but it’s still guesswork, you know, with a full tank of fuel, probably another hot track tomorrow, who knows if we’re going to have Alpine pace or whatever, but hopefully we do. Hopefully it’s a two-stop, I think it probably will be with the track conditions, I know some cars save two Mediums, some saved two Hards so that could be quite a determining factor.”