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Daniel Ricciardo will start the Spanish GP from P9 after making his way into Q3. The Australian, however, was not in an utterly jubilant mood after the session. He was happy about reaching Q3, but was not entirely happy with the progress that the car made this weekend. The MCL36 has yet to meet the expectations of both the drivers and the team.
While speaking to the media after qualifying, the McLaren driver was asked whether the upgrades were an improvement. He admitted that the car had certainly improved, yet there remains much more to be extracted from it. The 32-year-old driver also stressed that the team does not want to celebrate a P9 in qualifying and lower its expectations.
He said:
“I think they have. My feeling is we still got more to get out of them. Because it is not always like: you put them on. You still have to work with them, once they are on the car and kind of develop the setup around them. I would like to think we still haven’t perfected it maybe.”
He continued:
“But there is some small improvement and hopefully we can get better and better. It’s Q3. But we don’t want to celebrate P9. We still have some work to do.”
Daniel Ricciardo did, however, concede that he was happy with P9 because the car had struggled for pace this weekend and the team had been playing catch-up with the rest of the midfield. Keeping that in mind, this was the maximum that was possible from the car. He said:
“Happy with Q3, yeah. That was our target, like into the session. I mean, it is always a target. We weren’t ever that quick this weekend. We were trying to work on the new package. We knew there was a possibility to get into Q3. Definitely wasn’t a sure thing. That was kind of the first target, happy we got that. Still changing some things to keep improving. But we are in a decent starting position for tomorrow.”
McLaren will be hoping to score maximum points at the Spanish GP on Sunday.
Daniel Ricciardo will be hoping to score some valuable points this weekend
Daniel Ricciardo has not had the best of starts to the season, to say the least. The Australian has been a step behind his teammate for most of this season, leading to speculations about McLaren looking elsewhere to fill that second seat alongside Lando Norris.
The Spanish GP is the perfect opportunity for Ricciardo to finish in front of his teammate and start repaying the team's trust in him.
