Q3 difficult to grasp for the RBs
In Bahrain Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda ended up at loggerheads at the end of the race. Both did not score points and it will not be easy to do so in Jeddah this weekend. A year ago the Japanese tried to defend tenth position from Kevin Magnussen's attacks, but in the end he had to surrender to the Dane. Below are the words of the pilots of the Racing Bulls and technical director Alan Permane at the end of free practice in Saudi Arabia.
Yuki Tsunoda: “There are still a couple of areas we need to focus on, but the car is well balanced. The data collected in the two free practice sessions are important and will help us to lower the times in the next sessions. Last week in Bahrain I missed out on Q3 by seven thousandths of a second and this shows that the gaps are close, but this keeps us all well motivated and focused.”
Daniel Ricciardo: “It was a two-sided second session. With the first set of soft compounds we were competitive, however I struggled a lot with the second set. The track was evolving and everyone was improving, but I really struggled to perfect my time because I encountered some traffic and I wasn't completely comfortable. With the second set it was a bit of an unknown, we learned something, but looking at the first set, we shouldn't be too discouraged. It will be really difficult to predict Friday's result because already in these tests we were all close. It is a very different circuit to that of Bahrain; the asphalt and the behavior of the tires are different. It's a fantastic track, it will be fun in Qualifying.”
Alan Permane: “We followed a slightly different program to the others because we wanted to use two sets of soft compounds in cooler conditions, in the evening, to prepare for qualifying. While Yuki was in P11 at the end of the second session, unfortunately Daniel encountered traffic on his fastest lap in PL2 and this prevented him from achieving a representative time. We have done our race preparation work with the soft compound tires and have a lot of data to analyze“.
#Arabia #Ricciardo #fun #Qualifying
