"I Want To Rip My Shirt Off": Ricciardo Reacts To Qualifying In P4

Sunday, 29 October 2023 at 11:00

Updated at Saturday, 02 December 2023 at 18:16

F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo reflected on putting his AlphaTauri on P4 ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda have shown a decent pace already in free practice sessions. Both AlphaTauri drivers put their cars in the top ten at the end of the Free Practice Three session.

However, nobody would expect to see AlphaTauri drivers beat drivers from teams like Mercedes, McLaren, or Red Bull in Qualifying, which is exactly what Daniel Ricciardo accomplished.

The Honey Badger scored an amazing P4 with a lap time of 1:17.382. Asked to comment on his qualifying session afterward, Ricciardo told the media with a big smile on his face:

“"It's a good energy right now. I just wanna rip my shirt off! But anyway, I'm very happy with P4. It's an amazing result for us as a team."”

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The Australian driver realizes that the result that matters is on Sunday, so he does not want to jump the gun. On the other hand, P4 is a great starting place and already an amazing result for AlphaTauri.

“"Obviously, today's half the job, but we'll focus on tomorrow in an hour or so but I think in the next hour, we'll enjoy this. Feels very, very, very nice."”

Ricciardo was aided in the first two qualifying parts by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who gave him a slipstream down the main straight.

Tsunoda brought a new power unit for his car this weekend, which is outside allocation, so he was set to start from the back of the grid no matter where he qualified.

“"Yuki was great and gave me a slipstream in Q1 and 2, so that definitely gave us the extra tenth or two to get in, and then Q3 was just our pace."”

Ricciardo revealed he was aiming for as high as P7 or P6, but not even the Australian himself would believe a P4 was accomplishable ahead of the Qualifying.