Daniel Ricciardo says his RB team has not yet reached any “firm conclusions” on whether its latest upgrade package is a flop or not.
RB implemented in Barcelona last weekend a significant array of updates on its VCARB 01 contender, with the hope of boosting the latter’s performance.
Unfortunately, to the bewilderment of the team’s drivers, the package proved to be a setback, at least in its early iteration, with Ricciardo and team mate Yuki Tsunoda both failing to exit Q1 in qualifying and finishing well down the order on race day.
However, despite the disappointing results, the Faenza-based squad’s engineers aren’t throwing in the towel on their upgrades just yet.
Ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, Ricciardo confirmed that the team will dedicate Friday’s sole practice session to conducting tests with the different parts and settings on both its cars.
“There is still some questions for sure,” Ricciardo conceded. “But are we convinced that the upgrade is a flop? No, we’re not.
“So Yuki and I are going to start with different set-ups. It’s a combination of kind of everything, because we’re still trying to figure it out.
“We’ll start different tomorrow morning and then hopefully learn a bit from practice, and then merge for the Sprint quali.
“We’re not chucking anything in the bin yet. But there is still no firm conclusions, I would say. It’s a bit harder on a Sprint, but we have to keep trying to plug away at it.”
RB hasn’t dismissed the possibility of reverting to its previous-spec car. But Ricciardo says the team will first take a multi-pronged approach by setting up its cars with a mix of parts.
“It’s a bit of a mix,” he added. “There are certainly some old bits on one and whatever, but it’s not just like for like.
“Because there’s even some new-new bits I think that we’re both going to get a piece of. It’s mixed.
“But that’s their best guess from the data from Barcelona, from where they think it could be. Going to split the cars and see.”
On the other side of the RB garage, Tsunoda confirmed RB’s set-up strategy in Austria, but the Japanese driver felt confident that his team has pinpointed the cause of their Spanish struggles
“So, we’re going to test for sure, as a team across the cars, and even though we knew that it’s going to be a Sprint qualifying race,” he said.
“We wanted to know these answers as soon as possible, with comparing the cars. It’s not like old or new and everything. We’re still bringing some new parts into this week.
“It’s kind of mixed between all of them but should be end of this week. We know the answer, what was causing it and what’s the direction we should take in the future.”
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