Daniel Ricciardo was the star of qualifying in Bahrain on Saturday, putting his Toro Rosso sixth on the grid at Sakhir. 24 hours later, this soon became nothing as he contacted with a rival and quickly plummeted down the field at Sakhir.
“That was… a few things!” he writes in a blog on the Toro Rosso team website. “It was a shame. It was frustrating. It was disappointing. It’s a race to forget.”
Red Bull and Toro Rosso reserve driver but racing with HRT for 11 events last year, Ricciardo moved back up to the midfield for the start of 2012. He started in fine style, scoring two points at home in Australia, and was confident of repeating a top ten result in the Middle East last Sunday.
“Basically, that first lap was a complete…(word I’d rather not say!)” he continues to write. “Whoever you are, this is going to happen from time to time. You’re supposed to blank it and get on with the race – but being brutally honest it’s hard to blank something like that…do I now forget about it and brush it off as just one of those things? No, of course not. I’ll dwell on it – and nothing is quite as good for dwelling as a long flight with nothing else to do. At some point I’ll be fine and looking forward to Barcelona – but I’m not there yet.”
The Perth man is now preparing for next week’s test at Mugello.
“There's plenty to do before the next race,” he continues. “I’m in the simulator Thursday and Friday and the programme is quite busy. After a couple of days in the simulator it’s off to the factory and then down to Mugello for the test. That’s going to be full-on, too. The team will undoubtedly have a few new things to try out and there’s plenty of stuff from China and Bahrain that we need to test out a little bit more under different conditions. From what the engineers tell me, we are going to have a very full job list to work through.”
Four races into the 20-event schedule for 2012, Toro Rosso is ninth overall.
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  S. Vettel | Red Bull | 1:35:10.990 |
| 2. | K. Raikkonen | Lotus | +3.333 |
| 3. | R. Grosjean | Lotus | +10.194 |
| 4. | M. Webber | Red Bull | +38.788 |
| 5. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | +55.460 |
| 6. | P. di Resta | Force India | +57.543 |
| 7. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | +57.803 |
| 8. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | +58.984 |
| 9. | F. Massa | Ferrari | +1:04.999 |
| 10. | M. Schumacher | Mercedes | +1:11.490 |
| Full results | |||
| Daniel Ricciardo | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| More Daniel Ricciardo photos | |||
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