Daniel Ricciardo has conceded that qualifying pace has been a relative weakness in Formula 1 this year, feeling that he and Red Bull have been too late to react to set-up changes.
Ricciardo targeted one-lap gains for 2018 but has only out-qualified Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen twice, albeit with multiple engine-related setbacks skewing the picture.
“I kind of feel…maybe I made my own bed in Monaco because I was like ‘this is awesome and this happiness will carry me through the rest of the year’, so if there is someone controlling it all, maybe they took that literally for me,” he said.
“Whatever happens, even if the season ended today, I’d still look back on the year with some fond memories.
“The qualifying, last year I wasn’t that happy with my qualifying and I thought at the start of this year I had improved some things but I haven’t really got everything out of it, or maybe Max is just getting a lot better. I’m not done yet.
“Honestly, not taking anything away from Max – for sure he’s fast and he’s been driving well – but it’s not necessarily like ‘shit yeah he had bigger balls in that corner’.
“But I feel we got left a bit last year with some qualifyings, where we should have done that, gone up on the front wing six clicks instead of one or two.
“Still in hindsight I’d like to be more proactive with some things in setup, I feel like a lot of the time we understand it but it’s too late.
“I guess we’re still learning but he’s been getting more on top of it than I have.”
