Visa Cash App RB F1 Team 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 Sprint 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 excellent 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 observe. After a Friday that noticed each drivers in the back of the sector, the workforce hoped the information would uncover some solutions for improved lap instances on Saturday.
No such luck. Both Ricciardo and Tsunoda have been eradicated in Q1, and they’re going to begin alongside one another within the ninth row on Sunday, with Tsunoda in P17 and Ricciardo in P18.
Despite 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 ultimately, I felt higher in qualifying than in Free Practice. At least I’m pleased with my lap and really feel like I used to be in a position to maximise the present package deal,” mentioned Tsunoda. “The final races have been going properly and even when it’s a disgrace, I feel it’s necessary that we’re going through this tougher second collectively as a workforce. It’s an excellent alternative to study from our struggles and develop as a workforce. The most necessary factor is to stay constructive, and we actually will.”
While the lap instances 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 have quite a lot of new elements 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 modifications in a single day and immediately in qualifying the automobile felt way more collectively.
“We made progress by way of feeling and stability, however sadly, we’re nonetheless in a troublesome spot by way of the stopwatch. Being out of Q1 with each vehicles, particularly utilizing three units of sentimental every, exhibits that in the mean time, we don’t have the tempo,” continued the VCARB driver. “There’s nonetheless extra to seek out and we’ll preserve chipping away. Tomorrow goes to return round fast, however we have now a couple of races forward of us with related observe 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. While VCARB will not be pleased with the outcomes in the mean time, Egginton sounded hopeful that this weekend has laid the groundwork for additional progress over the remainder of the 12 months.
“In phrases of automobile stability, there was some enchancment,” started Egginton. “This alone has not been sufficient, so clearly, we have now quite a 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 will probably be [analyzing] intimately the aero knowledge we have now gathered right here in Barcelona.
“On the flip aspect, each drivers have accomplished an excellent job of supporting the engineering workforce with suggestions on the quite a few take a look at gadgets we have now evaluated right here and in addition extracting the utmost from the vehicles we have now been in a position to present them with, so we have now loads of knowledge to work with to make the required steps ahead.”
