Daniel Ricciardo
Debris at the penultimate corner on his final flying lap is the reason Daniel Ricciardo was eliminated from Qualifying 1 for the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix.
The Australian believes he was on track to make the cut before dirt on the track at Kumhobocht saw him haemorrhage time.
“The lap was decent,” he began.
“It was trending to be good enough to get me through; I think it was trending for an 11.7 or an 11.8 – I’ll say conservatively 11.8.
“But [Lance] Stroll dropped a left-rear on the entry of [Turn] 13 – I’m only saying him because he was the driver.
“It’s one of those things, but it brought a lot of dirt on the track, so I basically lost all the time there.
“I think [Sebastian] Vettel was just behind me and actually he spun for the same reason.
“And I think Lando was then two cars behind and he even lost some time as well, from what I was told.
“That was where the lap got away. We lost about, close to 0.3s from the first time through there, which then was the difference.”
Ricciardo will line up for Sunday’s race 17th after recording a 1:12.081s.
Ahead of him, Valtteri Bottas missed the Qualifying 1 cut also with his best of 1:11.961, with Guanyu Zhou on the bubble in 14th having laid down a 1:11.826s in Qualifying 1.
Had Ricciardo delivered on the lap he was on without issue, it’s plausible he’d have squeaked through.
The Australian had taken a conservative entry to the right-hander after seeing plumes of dust ahead of him.
“As I got close then I could visually see the track was covered in dirt and sand, so I braked a little early to anticipate it and I still washed wide,” he explained.
“Obviously that not there [and I] would have got through, and I think there would have been probably about 0.3s to find then from that point on.
“I think we could have chipped away. Who knows what I could have found, but that was one of those situations that, what do you do?”
Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix gets underway at 23:00 AEST tonight.