Baku Blowout: Ricciardo Fumes as Tsunoda’s DNF Sparks Frustration and Apologies in F1 Chaos

After finishing the race on the Baku street circuit, where he suffered from “unusual” graining that caused wild fluctuations in his lap times, Daniel Ricciardo (RB) cited his teammate Hiroki Tsunoda as “the most frustrating thing of all. It was my retirement.”

At the Azerbaijan F1 GP on September 15, 2024, Ricciardo suffered from unexpected graining. It was so bad that they lost 2-3 seconds per lap and the team was scratching their heads because they couldn’t figure out why.

As a result, Ricciardo was forced to focus on rebuilding the car using all the tools at his disposal and finished 13th, without being able to do much in the way of racing.

After getting out of the car, Ricciardo admitted he was alone in the cockpit, using tools to make changes to the car, explaining: “It felt like a no man’s land.”

“I tried to do everything I could. Pierre (Hamlin, the race engineer) apologized after the race and said, ‘Maybe I said too much, but I was just trying to help.’ I responded.”

“We were all scratching our heads because we couldn’t understand why the problem was so bad.”

“We expected a bit of graining, but we didn’t expect to lose two or three seconds a lap. So everyone talked about it and said it wasn’t that bad, and we were trying to do something about it.” “

“The really weird thing is… my time dropped like crazy and then all of a sudden, without any warning, it started going back up. My lap times were varying by about 4 seconds, which was really crazy. It was terrible. I can’t believe how quickly I recovered from my condition.

“So after that, I was racing as hard as I could for a few laps trying to gain some time, then I tried to make the most of the course and push to the limit to recover as much as I could… that’s where I hit the wall as much as I could, but it was really problematic because I couldn’t read how the tyres were moving from one lap to the next.

Red Bull could announce the 2025 RB seat as early as the weekend of the next Singapore Grand Prix.

Is he frustrated that he doesn’t have a car to prove he’s worthy of a contract extension? When asked, Ricciardo said: “Honestly, the most frustrating thing today was that Yuki was injured and couldn’t race.”

“I’m really curious to know how his race went. He may not have had any graining and he may have suffered as much as I did.”

“I’m not talking about comparing the riders to each other, but from a team point of view, but all I know so far is that I’ve had a bad case of graining.”

“So we can speculate that it might have been the same with Yuki’s car, but we don’t really know, and in that sense it’s hard to learn from it and move forward. We don’t have Yuki’s data. Kara.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I know he had some damage and had to stop the car. It’s a real shame because I wanted it to be over and I wanted the data.”

“So it was a tough race today. However, I’m happy that we have the next race in Singapore in a few days, so we don’t have to drag out today’s race too long.”

Unlike Ricciardo, Hiroki Tsunoda, who occupied the 2025 seat, collided with Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) on the opening lap and suffered serious damage to his car, forcing him to retire on lap 14.

Regarding Ricciardo’s graining issue, team boss Laurent Mequise said it was “extremely unusual” and added: “We need to investigate thoroughly why we were the only ones affected so badly.”

In the 17th round of the 2024 F1, Azerbaijan GP, ​​Oscar Piastri (McLaren) overtook poleman Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) to take his second win of the season.

The next round, the Singapore Grand Prix, will take place at the Marina Bay City Course and will begin with Free Practice 1 on September 20.

F1 Azerbaijan GP Special Feature