30/03/2019
NEWS STORY
Renault F1 Team endured a disappointing qualifying session for the 2019 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday with Daniel Ricciardo eleventh and Nico Hulkenberg seventeenth on the grid for tomorrow's 999th Grand Prix.
Daniel missed out on a place in Q3 by a narrow 0.017secs, following his lap-time of a 1min 29.488secs in Q2 under the lights of the Bahrain International Circuit.
Team-mate Nico dropped out from qualifying in Q1, missing out on Q2 by a short 0.075secs.
Nico Hulkenberg: "We unfortunately suffered a couple of issues with the car at the worst possible time during qualifying. We lost performance and there was no chance of fixing anything in a short amount of time. We need to understand and fix these problems so they don't happen again. I've felt good in the car all weekend, so it's a shame to miss out on a top ten grid slot for the race. Hopefully we can make something out of tomorrow, it's going to be tough from so far back, but we'll be giving it our best."
Daniel Ricciardo: "Qualifying wasn't perfect for us by any means, but it's an improvement from where we've been so far this weekend. In the end we were closer to Q3 than we expected at the end of Friday. We're there or thereabouts and we know we have things to work on. I'm still learning to master this car, but I'm getting there each time I step into it. We have a free choice of tyres for tomorrow's race, which gives us some things to assess overnight on strategy. I'll be aiming to get the most out of it, and taking a handful of points is certainly a possibility."
Alan Permane, Sporting Director: "It has been a difficult qualifying session for the team today. We faced a number of issues that cost significant performance, the most expensive one being an engine mapping issue generating an engine safe mode almost the entire lap. It is disappointing but we will aim to make progress up the grid in tomorrow's race."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Sakhir, here.