Daniel Ricciardo left Korea frustrated after a mechanical problem on his Toro Rosso cost him a points finish in the closing laps. The Australian was running ninth before the problem which forced him to pull out and felt the team were deprived of an outstanding result given the car at his disposal.
“I think we did all we could today in the race. I had a decent first stint and tried to run as long as possible on the Prime tyre. The car wasn’t perfect but it was good enough to be in a points position with a few laps to go and I was hanging on nicely to ninth. It’s déjà vu, as I had the same scenario here last year, when I came down to Turn 3 with a few laps to go, I braked and the car immediately shot to the left. That time it cost me one place. Once I got out of the cockpit this time, I could see there was a mechanical problem at the front left corner. Personally, I was really pleased with my performance in the car today. Maybe we didn’t have a top ten car but I was able to fight in the top ten. But for myself and the team it’s frustrating to get no reward. Now all we can do is look ahead to Suzuka.”
Teammate Jean-Eric Vergne also had to retire late on with what appeared to be an identical problem and the Frenchman is keen to put this weekend behind him.
“At the moment, we’re not quite sure what happened in the end. I felt the car pull to one side and something was clearly not right, so the team called me into the pits. Starting from sixteenth, this was always going to be a difficult weekend and after I made up a few places in the early stages, I began to suffer with tyre degradation, so I agreed when the team decided to switch me from a two to a three stop strategy. I just want to get to Suzuka and start again now, but we will need to do a lot of work if we want to return to the performance level we should have had here.”
