24/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo has admitted that following a thoroughly miserable weekend in Monaco, he is to "step away for a few days".
Already having a torrid time, things went from bad to worse for the popular Australian, when, 46 laps into the race, he was lapped by his teammate who was on his way to a podium finish.
Looking at the back of Kimi Raikkonen's Alfa Romeo for much of the afternoon, Ricciardo, who posted the fourth fastest lap of the afternoon, eventually finished a distant twelfth.
"I think the whole weekend was simply just a weekend to forget," he subsequently told Sky Sports. "Obviously car 4 (his teammate, Lando Norris) and the rest of the team got a podium, so I obviously want to congratulate them and they got it right.
"I don't even know if it we got it wrong, it just never really got going," he admitted. "We didn't really do a crazy different set-up, the cars, I want to say, were nearly identical from a set-up point of view.
"I'm not trying to be too clever with that either," he insisted, "obviously I've got more to learn with this car than Lando, so I'm not trying to be different, I'm just trying to follow suit and move forward with that."
However, the Australian, who suffered heartbreak here in 2017 before finding redemption twelve months later, insists that he will not dwell on the past weekend's events.
"Just a strange weekend really from the get-go and one to forget," he said. "I'm not going to over-analyse this one, I think just forward for Baku and go from there.
"This year there has certainly been one of those races where it is like 'yeah I've got to find a bit more but it will come', I mean this weekend was more of an anomaly with such a big difference. Getting lapped, might be the first time (by a team-mate), I don't really know what to say.
"I will definitely look into it, but I think when it is a weekend like this and as far off as it was, probably best just to step away for a few days."
"I don't think it was such a bad race from Daniel's side," said team boss Andreas Seidl, according to Speedcafe.com. "I think there were periods in the race when he had free air where he could actually show what he's able to do here around Monaco.
"But again, if you start this race here in P11, and unfortunately drop back in the first corner two positions, your race is done.
"If you look back since the beginning of season, we have made two steps forward with him," he continued. "We simply have to keep working together now as one team, stay calm, keep analysing, keep learning.
"He sees that the potential is there, which is I think the positive thing for him to see that, and that Lando can pull it off.
"At the same time we look at the team side as well what we can do in order to help him on the car side to give him back this natural feeling to go fast."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Monaco, here.