- Japanese GP - FP2
Ricciardo takes blame for FP2 crash
Daniel Ricciardo said he had no excuse for the mistake which saw his second practice session at the Japanese Grand Prix end in the barriers.
Ricciardo lost his Red Bull coming out of the final chicane and went head-on into the barriers. He walked away from the car unharmed but lost roughly an hour of running as well as damaging the front wing and suspension of the car.
"It wasn't really a problem, I made a mistake," he said. "I did my first quick lap and then everyone's cooling after that, so you go fast, slow, fast, slow. On the slow lap there was a yellow flag so I went extra slow hoping that on my quick lap the yellow flag would have been cleared and I'd be able to push. I think the tyres probably cooled too much and when I came out of the last chicane I got on the power and had a few moments and just couldn't catch it. Not an error that I want to make at the beginning of the session, but not really any excuse or turning back now."
Asked if the chassis had been damaged, he said: "They're still going over the chassis check, but it looks good. So hopefully there won't be a change with that."
Ricciardo is also confident the lost running will not have a big impact on his race weekend, with wet weather likely to mix things up on Sunday.
"It looks like it won't hurt me too much with the long-run pace. I missed a time there with the option, but it seems pretty straightforward. We know how the tyre responds and it looks like there is a second between the compounds. Even though I did one lap, the lap I did came after some changes between FP1 and FP2 and I felt better off. Would have been nice to stay out there but I think we're still looking all right."
Mercedes was over a second clear of its nearest rival and 1.4s quicker than Ricicardo's Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel. Ricciardo admitted he was hoping his car would be closer to the front.
"I was expecting something like Singapore coming into the weekend and being within a few tenths of the Mercs and fighting for the podium. They were really quick today and we think we're there and then they pull a gap like this. We'll see tomorrow, but looking at today we won't be able to do anything with that in qualifying, maybe the race will change, but in the dry the best we can do is third on the grid."
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