Daniil Kvyat did not manage to get out of Q1
The first victim of the new qualification system is therefore Daniil Kvyat, who couldn't do better than 18th. The session went better for Daniel Ricciardo, who finished 8th.
Daniil Kvyat could not hide his disappointment at not being able to go beyond Q1: « It’s a new system and someone had to make a mistake, and today it was us. But we still have plenty of things to analyze from our short Q1. »
The young Russian was thus trapped by the limited time he had to set a time that ensured his place: « Obviously, it’s frustrating to be 18th, but we will learn from today. My first lap was compromised by traffic, so I had to abandon it. During the second lap, I lost performance in my tires and it wasn’t enough to go through. »
In these circumstances, we can better understand the anger of Christian Horner, the team director, who acknowledges that the system could not have satisfied the audience present: « For me, this new qualifying system does not work and we should apologize to the fans. We have not created a show for them, which is shameful, especially for the first race of the season. »
The community manager of the team also chimed in, with a certain dose of humor and self-deprecation:
SPY: Meanwhile, other things tried in Australia that didn’t work out as well as people hoped… #RBspy 🕵️ pic.twitter.com/sW7EVkUq7W
— Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) March 19, 2016
If Daniel Ricciardo wasn’t too thrilled with this new system, his session still went better as he logically ranked in Q3. Nevertheless, he couldn’t do better than 8th, behind the two Toro Rosso: « It was good to make it into Q3. We expected to be more or less in the top 8. A tenth less would have allowed us to gain a few positions, but it’s always like that. »
