Ricciardo in front of his home crowd:
- Tsunoda: 1:16.788 - P8 (Q3)
- Ricciardo: 1:18:085 - P18 (Q1)
Difference: 1.297s.
"
Ricciardo despair has first worrying echo of McLaren nightmare"
The Race - Mar 23, 2024
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/d...a-1-nightmare/
"However, his [Ricciardo] comments have worrying echoes of those at Monaco in 2021 when he hit the first nadir of his McLaren stint and felt that car problems must be to blame for his lack of pace. Subsequent checks by the team revealed that wasn’t the case and that it was instead all about the way he was driving an admittedly tricky car. (...)
The RB team will take a close look at the car and it might be there’s something still not right that’s holding Ricciardo back. Certainly, the Australian hopes that's the case. But given his struggles in recent years, there’s still a big question mark about whether the limitation might be a driver who is still struggling to get the most out of the car and recapture the sky-high level of his F1 pomp."
"
Dejected Ricciardo shows first flashes of McLaren depths"
RN365 - March 23, 2024
https://racingnews365.com/dejected-r...-mclaren-nadir
"Perhaps it was expected after losing a lap time in front of his home crowd that unceremoniously dumped him out in Q1 for the Australian Grand Prix, but Daniel Ricciardo cut a broken figure after qualifying in Melbourne.
His final flying lap had been good enough to secure a Q2 berth but was quickly deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 5 meaning he qualified 18th fastest - on the back row of the 19-car field.
Whilst admitting the humiliating demotion had "yet to sink it", the Perth-native was upbeat about the actual lap he had driven and was far more concerned about the performance of team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, who would go on to qualify in eighth, with a lap 1.3s faster than Ricciardo managed.
The downbeat Ricciardo was clutching at straws in the hope that some strategic brilliance would enable him to climb into the points in what is expected to be at least a two-stop race.
The result, and continued excellence of Tsunoda, is a dagger-blow to Ricciardo's hopes of returning to the Red Bull seat he left in 2018 for next season.
But the eight-time Grand Prix hinted that the problem was more on his side than the car, in echoes of his flawed McLaren stint in which he would often admit he was just not capable of doing what Lando Norris was.
Ricciardo feels confident and able to push the car, but is simply at a loss to explain where Tsunoda can find the extra time he is unable to."
Hamilton: P11 (Q2)
"
‘Messes with the mind’: Hamilton hits 14-year low in Australian GP qualifying"
The Guardian - March 23, 2024
https://theguardian.com/sport/2024/m...ualifying-2024
"The 39-year-old will join Ferrari next season and on the form of these opening meetings a long slog in the Mercedes lies ahead with 22 more races to come. He qualified in ninth at the season opener in Bahrain and eighth at the second round in Saudi Arabia, and has been out-qualified in each meeting by his teammate George Russell who was seventh in Australia. He has only eight points to Russell’s 18 this season.
Since the new regulations were introduced in 2022 Mercedes have struggled to master them to even close to the extent Red Bull has achieved. Hamilton, who until 2022 had taken a win in every season of his career in F1 since his debut in 2007, has now gone without a victory for 57 races, the last at the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP. Mercedes have won only once since 2022, indicative of how they have failed to match their rivals."