Visa Money App RB F1 Group has come away with factors in 4 straight races, relationship 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 end result 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 workforce, 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 collection of upgrades to Barcelona, however these upgrades have but to materialize into outcomes on the monitor. After a Friday that noticed each drivers in the back of the sphere, the workforce hoped the information 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 end result, each drivers remained constructive of their post-qualifying feedback.
“We’ve been battling 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 Follow. At the very least I’m pleased with my lap and really feel like I used to be capable of maximise the present package deal,” mentioned Tsunoda. “The final races have been going properly and even when it’s a disgrace, I believe it’s necessary that we’re going through this harder second collectively as a workforce. It’s a very good alternative to study from our struggles and develop as a workforce. Crucial factor is to stay constructive, and we definitely will.”
Whereas the lap occasions weren’t there for Ricciardo, he nonetheless believes that the workforce made progress in a single day with the setup.
“It’s a tough weekend. We’ve got lots of new components on the automotive, and we nonetheless want to grasp one of the simplest ways to make them work,” started Ricciardo. “After yesterday, after we have been nonetheless discovering a little bit of steadiness, we made fairly huge modifications in a single day and immediately in qualifying the automotive felt rather more collectively.
“We made progress by way of feeling and steadiness, 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 soppy every, reveals that in the intervening time, we don’t have the tempo,” continued the VCARB driver. “There’s nonetheless extra to search out and we’ll preserve chipping away. Tomorrow goes to return round fast, however we now have a number of races forward of us with related monitor traits, so we clearly want to determine collectively the issues we’re lacking.”
Jody Egginton, the workforce’s Technical Director, praised each drivers for his or her suggestions to the workforce. Whereas VCARB will not be pleased with the outcomes in the intervening time, Egginton sounded hopeful that this weekend has laid the groundwork for additional progress over the remainder of the yr.
“When it comes to automotive steadiness, there was some enchancment,” started Egginton. “This alone has not been sufficient, so clearly, we now have lots of homework to do tonight, but in addition forward of Austria, to extract extra from the automotive and a big a part of this work might be [analyzing] intimately the aero information we now have gathered right here in Barcelona.
“On the flip aspect, each drivers have finished a very good job of supporting the engineering workforce with suggestions on the quite a few take a look at gadgets we now have evaluated right here and in addition extracting the utmost from the automobiles we now have been capable of present them with, so we now have loads of information to work with to make the required steps ahead.”