Daniel Ricciardo rues missed opportunity during Qualifying

Daniel Ricciardo is ruing a missed opportunity, after the Australian driver was struck with a mechanical issue on his Toro Rosso towards the closing stages of Q2. The 23-year-old was optimistic he could’ve progressed to the top ten shootout, after setting a positive time during the opening qualifying segment previous to his issue.

As the second qualifying segment drew to a close, the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo was seen coasting to a halt through turn 16 throughout the final sector of the lap. This naturally brought out double-waved yellows, and hindered several drivers including that of Jenson Button in being able to improve on their respective times. Although the exact cause of the issue on Ricciardo’s car has yet to be determined, the Australian driver reported back to the team that he simply lost drive coming out of turn 12.

“In Q2, we were only doing two runs of one flying lap each and on my last one, I simply lost drive coming out of Turn 12, feeling as if the car was in neutral and I couldn’t find any gears.” Explained Daniel Ricciardo, after a frustrating end to his qualifying session. “I could not bring the car back to the pits and had to abort the run at the side of the track. A shame, because Q1 went very well and I was able to post a competitive time. I don’t know if I could have eventually got into Q3, but whatever the result, this has been a missed opportunity, although that’s part of the game in motor racing. Hopefully we can bounce back tomorrow.”

Toro Rosso will naturally investigate the cause of the issue, with the hope that such bad luck fails to return throughout the remainder of the season. The Toro Rosso duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne eventually qualified 16th and 17th respectively, with the latter making a major error on his final lap in Q2 and subsequently failing to improve up the order.

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