A winner here in 2018, Daniel Ricciardo is completely baffled by his lack of pace in practice in Monaco, admitting that he's got work to do.

His 2018 victory was widely seen as redemption following the previous year's strategic error which essentially robbed him of the win. This time around however, based on the evidence of the opening practice sessions, the Australian will be lucky to finish in the points, far less on the podium.

"I had confidence, it was just not translating to a lap time," said Ricciardo, who finished 15th in both sessions, 1.045s off his teammate's pace in FP1 and 0.878s in the second session.

"From behind the wheel it was quite frustrating," he admitted, "because I would cross the line and think it had been a decent lap, but then it was like you are P12 or P15, and even at one stage P17.

"So it is frustrating because it is a long way off, there is a lot of time to find.

"Luckily we have tomorrow off, but right now it is like, yeah, trying to figure out where all the time is.

"The second sector was my weakest one, and that's Turn 5, 6, all the low-speed... It is a bit surprising why I am losing so much there.

"I'll get into the data and have a look... it's a good thing that tomorrow we have the day off, we've got this evening and all day tomorrow to work it out.

"But this is why I love Monaco," he smiled, "you get a day off to really get into it, reset, and have a look at where we're missing out. I think by Saturday I'll be all good and we'll figure it out, but today it just felt like a little bit of a stalemate at times.

"We've got some work to do, but the sun is shining, and we'll get back out there on Saturday and have some fun."

Check out our Thursday gallery from Monaco, here.