Daniel Ricciardo says that he needs to “figure out what happened” after capping off a poor weekend in Monaco with a finish of 12th.
The West Australian lined up an effective 11th on the grid but quickly dropped two positions and could barely recover any track position from there.
Ricciardo had also been thoroughly outqualified by Norris, who earned fifth on the grid but an effective fourth once pole-sitter Charles Leclerc failed to leave the pits.
Whereas the Briton had only missed an official front row start by 0.044s, Ricciardo was almost two tenths of a second away from even making it out of Q2.
The 2018 Monaco Grand Prix winner was also slow in practice, winding up 15th-fastest after the opening day’s running and 13th in the third and final session before qualifying.
His race pace was more competitive, a point noted by team principal Andreas Seidl, but by then the damage was already done.
“This has just been a bit of a weekend to forget for me, unfortunately,” admitted Ricciardo.
“The race was always going to be tricky after a difficult qualifying session yesterday and that’s how it turned out. I struggled a bit at the start on the medium [tyre compound] and that pretty much decided our race.
“The second stint on the hard [tyre] was encouraging and the lap times really started to improve, but by that point there wasn’t much more I could do given how hard it is to pass here.
“I’ll just have to figure out what happened and just step away for a few days to switch off a little bit before going again in Baku [Azerbaijan Grand Prix, next round].”
The 31-year-old also had an upbeat take on the contrasting experience of his team-mate.
“On the positive side, it was a great result for Lando and the team, so congratulations to everyone,” added Ricciardo.
“It shows the pace is there in the car and that we’ve just got to work at unlocking it, but that will come with time and mileage.”
Round 6 in Azerbaijan will be held on June 4-6.
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