Visa Money App RB F1 Group has come away with factors in 4 straight races, courting again to the Miami Grand Prix. That weekend noticed each Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda end within the factors within the F1 Dash Race — a outcome Ricciardo loved deep into the afternoon in Miami, even after his struggles in qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix — and kicked off a string of fine outcomes for the group, together with Ricciardo’s P8 within the Canadian Grand Prix.
That streak seems headed for an finish at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Like many groups, VCARB introduced a sequence of upgrades to Barcelona, however these upgrades have but to materialize into outcomes on the observe. After a Friday that noticed each drivers in the back of the sector, the group hoped the info would uncover some solutions for improved lap occasions on Saturday.
No such luck. Each Ricciardo and Tsunoda have been eradicated in Q1, and they’ll begin alongside one another within the ninth row on Sunday, with Tsunoda in P17 and Ricciardo in P18.
Regardless of that outcome, each drivers remained optimistic of their post-qualifying feedback.
“We’ve been scuffling with tempo this weekend and tried a number of issues to try to enhance, and in the long run, I felt higher in qualifying than in Free Observe. Not less than I’m pleased with my lap and really feel like I used to be capable of maximise the present package deal,” stated Tsunoda. “The final races have been going nicely and even when it’s a disgrace, I believe it’s necessary that we’re dealing with this harder second collectively as a group. It’s an excellent alternative to study from our struggles and develop as a group. Crucial factor is to stay optimistic, and we definitely will.”
Whereas the lap occasions weren’t there for Ricciardo, he nonetheless believes that the group made progress in a single day with the setup.
“It’s a difficult weekend. We have now a whole lot of new components on the automobile, and we nonetheless want to know one of the best ways to make them work,” started Ricciardo. “After yesterday, once we have been nonetheless discovering a little bit of stability, we made fairly huge adjustments in a single day and at present in qualifying the automobile felt way more collectively.
“We made progress by way of feeling and stability, however sadly, we’re nonetheless in a tricky spot by way of the stopwatch. Being out of Q1 with each automobiles, particularly utilizing three units of sentimental every, reveals that in the meanwhile, we don’t have the tempo,” continued the VCARB driver. “There’s nonetheless extra to search out and we’ll maintain chipping away. Tomorrow goes to return round fast, however we’ve got a number of races forward of us with related observe traits, so we clearly want to determine collectively the issues we’re lacking.”
Jody Egginton, the group’s Technical Director, praised each drivers for his or her suggestions to the group. Whereas VCARB might not be pleased with the outcomes in the meanwhile, Egginton sounded hopeful that this weekend has laid the groundwork for additional progress over the remainder of the yr.
“When it comes to automobile stability, there was some enchancment,” started Egginton. “This alone has not been sufficient, so clearly, we’ve got a whole lot of homework to do tonight, but in addition forward of Austria, to extract extra from the automobile and a big a part of this work can be [analyzing] intimately the aero information we’ve got gathered right here in Barcelona.
“On the flip facet, each drivers have achieved an excellent job of supporting the engineering group with suggestions on the quite a few take a look at objects we’ve got evaluated right here and in addition extracting the utmost from the automobiles we’ve got been capable of present them with, so we’ve got loads of information to work with to make the required steps ahead.”
