R.B.
Ricciardo struggled with the handling of his VCARB 01 in traffic and spent much of the race outside the points, an issue the team plans to investigate before next weekend. Tsunoda, meanwhile, was hovering around the top 10, chasing Magnussen for 12th place in the closing stages. With Ricciardo on soft tyres and Tsunoda on hard tyres, the team instructed the Japanese racer to let his teammate go ahead. Ricciardo ultimately complied, but radio messages suggest he was less than impressed with the instructions.
Daniel Ricciardo, 13th
“Today I wasn’t good enough to score points. I struggled quite a bit at the beginning of the race with the used soft tyres because I had quite bad grip at the start. In the middle of the race on the hard tyres I picked up a bit of pace but I still felt like I was struggling. In the end, the new soft compound was much better. I finally picked up the pace and was able to catch up with the pack. At that point I got a bit stuck behind another car and lost grip on my tyres.
“The request for a driver change was expected and did not come as a surprise. I discussed the strategy plan with the team before the race and it was very likely that we would start the race on used tyres and then finish the race on new soft tyres. What is what is what, now we make a fresh start. We have ideas on how to improve, so we are confident going into next week’s race in Jeddah.”
Yuki Tsunoda 14th place
“I think I was doing pretty well in the points until about halfway through the race, and then I felt the points slip away from me. I wasn’t fighting for the points at that time, so we have to review everything in post-race analysis and learn from it for the future. It’s still Race 1, so there’s a lot to understand. Overall, there’s still a lot to learn from this weekend. The mechanics did a great job with the pit stops, and if there’s anything we can improve on strategy, we’ll review and improve it for Saudi Arabia.”
Jody Eggington, Technical Director
“It was a frustrating race in many ways. We need to look at the data and review the points where we could have taken advantage of our closest rivals in the race. Daniel struggled a bit with the balance of the car in the first few stints and we need to understand what factors influenced this. Daniel made good use of the soft compound tyres in the final stint and worked his way back up into the group, but overtaking was not easy and he just didn’t have enough laps to make progress. Yuki’s car balance was good and his pace in the early part of the race was quite reasonable, he was running well in the mid-group and looking after his tyres fairly well.
“However, we need to review the mid-race in more detail, including how Lance (Stroll) and Zhou (Guan Yu) took an advantage on the lap after their final pit stop. This cost us some track position and we were not able to recover it in the closing stages of the race, missing a chance to fight for tenth place. To summarise, we had a solid weekend and our package was able to perform quite well in the midfield battle, but I can’t help but feel that we weren’t able to extract everything from tonight’s race, so we leave Bahrain with disappointment. We have a lot of work to do between now and next week’s race in Saudi Arabia, but at the same time, with it so close we also have the opportunity to react and apply what we have learned from this event immediately.”
Laurent Mekies, Team Principal
“Overall, it was a tough Saturday with the midfield more close than ever. The battle for 11th place was a tough one with eight cars involved! I felt like I had a good fight in the early stages of the race as Yuki was doing well and managed to get up to 10th place. As the race went on I lost a few positions and struggled to overtake my rivals towards the end of the race. In the final stint I put Daniel on new soft tyres and switched cars to give me a chance to overtake Kevin (Magnussen) and Zhou (Guagne), but in the end it wasn’t enough and I had to settle for 13th and 14th place. We know it’s still only Race 1, but we will definitely review how we could have extracted more from the car and pace today. There have been more positives than negatives from my first weekend as Visa Cash App RB. Everyone was pushing extremely hard in Faenza and Bicester. If we can gain even a hundredth of a second in the midfield it will make a huge difference.”
