An upgrade package introduced for the Spanish Grand Prix has proved especially troublesome for the Faenza-based squad.
The team went backwards in Barcelona as it grappled with the new parts, including a floor body, sidepod inlet, engine cover, and rear wing.
It prompted the squad to run a mismatch approach in Austria a week later to get a better grip on things, which offered some insight as Ricciardo raced to ninth.
That prompted the Australian to describe elements of the package as a “downgrade” ahead of the British Grand Prix, where Haas comprehensively outperformed the squad.
The slip in performance from the squad is concerning on multiple fronts.
The most immediate is the concern that the current struggles point to a correlation issue within the squad’s development process.
With track testing highly restricted in F1, teams use a combination of wind tunnel testing and virtual systems (such as CFD) to predict the impact of new components.
Strong correlation in that process give engineers confidence in what they’re designing, while a lack of correlation quickly erodes that.
Worse still is that it can jeopardise future developments and send designers down the wrong path, leading the team’s on-track performance into a negative spiral.
“This could be a real shifting point,” Ricciardo acknowledged.
“Every moment in F1 is important but yeah, because this update, and our correlation and understanding can obviously dictate what we do with the next update and how well we understand it.
“What we learn now will basically dictate where our car is in October, November, so it’s a really important period for us.”
Ricciardo’s role, along with RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, is to provide clear, concise feedback as their anecdotal information is the only true means of validating what is seen in the digital world.
It’s then up to the team’s engineers to make sense of it all and resolve any underlying issues that may exist in the development process.
“It’s a lot of throw on the table and just say ‘you guys deal with it’, but it’s obviously a little bit like that,” Ricciardo explained.
“We have to just put it all out there and hopefully they can understand it – and simulator stuff as well, what we feel on the sim, just try to correlate that to the real car.
“It’s a team effort but there’s a little bit for us to go [over] from these last three weeks.”
Adding extra impetus is the threat Haas now poses in the constructors’ championship.
The American-registered team has scored 20 points in the last two weekends to sit just four back from RB in the title fight – the finishing order of which determines prize money entitlements at the end of the season.
It makes RB’s current plight potentially worth millions of dollars.
“Nico’s [Hulkenberg] scored big two weekends in a row now and all of a sudden out sixth place in the constructors’, the gap isn’t there anymore,” Ricciardo noted.
“This sport can shift so quickly and you never rest, and that’s why, fairness to the team, we brought updates a couple of weeks ago.
“We were pushing. We’ve been bringing upgrades every few races and they’ve actually been working really well.
“Obviously, this one hasn’t as much as we would have wanted. So it’s not due to a lack of effort.
“This is how where you get tested, where the season’s looking really good and not it’s at a kind of plateau.”
It is also where Ricciardo’s experience, something the team has historically never had in a driver, can add value to the team.
The Australian is able to take on a leadership role within the organisation, directly impacting decision making and team morale in the way a rookie driver – or one without the breadth of experience the eight-time race winner has – simply cannot.
“We have to make that right step,” Ricciardo said.
“It’s not about throwing tables around the room, it’s all constructive.
“Of course, people are frustrated with that, but this is about being constructive and trying to keep everyone together.
“It’s also motivational, you know. You see Haas, they’ve obviously found something, so there is lap time there, there is things that we can find.
“We just got to make sure we find it.”
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