Ricciardo hampered by tyre dramas in Azerbaijan

Ricciardo qualified his RB 16th fastest on Saturday, though penalties for Lewis Hamilton and Pierre Gasly saw him line up for the race in 14th.

In the early laps he was engaged in a scrap with Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris, before his pace fell away as the stint wore on.

Ricciardo started the race on the hard tyre, running until Lap 49 of the 51-lap race before swapping.

While that saw him run as high as 10th during the pit sequence early in the race, it ultimately made for a lonely afternoon as he then slipped backwards.

“Starting on the hard, you always have that option to go long,” Ricciardo explained.

“I think we knew it was going to be a long afternoon when I had graining before the medium guys had graining.

“Actually Ollie [Bearman], to be fair, Ollie probably had a little bit very early because he came back into us, so there was a few laps, we caught him, and I was right behind him thinking ‘Okay, I’ll pass him easily.”

“But basically, as soon as I caught him, I then had the graining and I think his probably cleared.

“So even the medium guys cleared me, and I was two, three seconds slow for, I don’t know, I felt like the whole race, but I would say at least 10 laps.”

Ricciardo was not the only driver to essentially run the entire race on a single set of tyres, with both Alpine drivers adopting the same strategy.

Neither fared much better than Ricciardo, with Esteban Ocon a lap down in 15th and Gasly only one place better in 12th – the latter having started 18th and last on the grid.

“We struggled so much with the graining,” Ricciardo said.

“I was just driving, honestly it was getting worse and worse, I thought ‘Okay, we’re probably just going to have to pit,’ and then the team said it looks like it’s clearing up on some cars, just try and do what you can with switches, help the balance, and see what happens.

“Then, all of a sudden, the next lap, a second quicker, half a second quicker, a second quicker. The swing was like four seconds.

“I’ve had graining before, but I’ve never had it like that.”

The complication for RB is, with Ricciardo the only car to reach the flag, the team doesn’t have another data point to help explain it.

Tsunoda was an early retirement after contact with Lance Stroll on the opening lap.

Though he initially tried to continue, he was losing several seconds a lap and ultimately pulled into the pits to retire, a sizeable hole punched in his sidepod.

“I saw Yuki pulled out with damage,” Ricciardo said.

“Obviously, I’d love for him to finish but also for us to gather more data because I’m curious if he would have had exactly the same race, or if he would have had no graining.

“We could have learned something where now it’s just, I had a lot of graining, and that’s all we know.

“I’m sure we’ll still learn something, but I think it also hurt us not having both cars out there.”