Daniel Ricciardo was delighted and surprised with the qualifying result in Bahrain on Saturday after ending fifth on the grid for Red Bull Racing.
The Australian admitted he and his team were not expecting to be so high up the grid after struggles during the free practice sessions on both Friday and Saturday morning at the Sakhir International Circuit, and felt the team exceeded where they had hoped to have qualified at the desert track.
Ricciardo is now looking forward to the Grand Prix on Sunday, and is hopeful of a strong result to build on his fourth place finish he achieved in the season opening Australian Grand Prix two weeks ago.
“I’m really happy with the result today,” said Ricciardo. “We didn’t expect to be fifth, especially from my side of the garage as yesterday didn’t go too well and this morning wasn’t great either.
“We came into qualifying thinking if all went well, maybe we would squeeze into Q3, and so to get into fifth is great. I am happy with the laps we did, the changes we made from FP3 worked well for us in quali and I am excited for what the race will bring tomorrow.”
