Ricciardo: I “killed” the ultrasoft after one sector
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo felt as though he had “killed” the ultrasoft tyre by the end of the first sector during practice for the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Pirelli has brought the ultrasoft tyre to China this year for the first time. The front-limited nature of the circuit, which places a significant strain on the left-front tyre, has historically meant that tyre degradation has been too high to use such a fragile compound.
In Friday’s practice sessions, drivers universally discovered that the ultrasoft tyre was only capable of one hot-lap during the qualifying simulation before the rubber started to lose significant grip.
Ricciardo, who finished FP2 ninth on the timesheet after failing to maximise his low-fuel ultrasoft run, admitted that he suffered a tyre performance drop-off at the end of the first sector.
“The ultrasoft is difficult,” he said. “For me I just struggled to get more grip out of the tyre today. I felt like after the first sector already I killed the tyre and the lap time didn’t really improve after the first three or four corners.
“We need to get that tyre working better over one lap.
“It might push us in a certain direction in the race, but I think we can improve on that, so tomorrow morning we’ll have another crack and see how we go.”
Despite Ricciardo finishing 1.075 seconds adrift of Lewis Hamilton’s benchmark time in FP2, Red Bull matched Mercedes in long run speed on the ultrasoft tyre.
Ricciardo averaged 1m39.17s when using the purple-marked tyre with heavy fuel. Valtteri Bottas posted an identical average and Hamilton only shaded Ricciardo’s pace with a 1m39.14s mean lap time.
“Our long runs were better, but it’s still tricky,” Ricciardo added. “It’s a front-dominated circuit, so you struggle a lot with the front tyres, but also the rear wasn’t that easy today either.
“So it was tricky, but I don’t think we’re actually looking too bad. We’ll make some adjustments and be stronger tomorrow.”
The delta between the ultrasoft and soft tyre was smaller than anticipated on Friday. Given the high rate of degradation on the ultrasoft compound, Ricciardo hinted that using the soft tyre in Q2 could be an option in order to start the race on the more durable compound.
“I think it’s no secret that I think a few people are thinking of qualifying on the soft,” he said. “It’s not that bad a tyre around here. The ultrasoft doesn’t seem to last that long, so you might see a few yellow tyres in Q2.”