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Ricciardo still hurt by Bahrain start

It turned in to a lonely race for Daniel Ricciardo as he finished in 15th place © Getty Images

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• Daniel Ricciardo

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Daniel Ricciardo admits that it will be hard to brush off his poor start in Bahrain that relegated him from sixth to 16th in the first lap.

Having qualified a career-best sixth on the grid, Ricciardo was hopeful of scoring solid points on Sunday in Bahrain. However, a poor start lost him some ground, and then he braked too early for turn one to lose yet more places before damaging his front wing further round the lap. Ricciardo admitted that he was unable to put it to the back of his mind during the race, and would still look back on it this week.

"Whoever you are, this is going to happen from time to time," Ricciardo said in his Toro Rosso blog. "You're supposed to blank it and get on with the race - but being brutally honest it's hard to blank something like that. When I came around to begin the second lap I knew I was 16th, I knew I had a damaged car and I knew the advantage I'd had starting sixth had blown away. You want to pretend it's not happening and imagine you're going to get another chance. The pitboard says otherwise.

"Do I now forget about it and brush it off as just one of those things? No, of course not. I'll dwell on it - and nothing is quite as good for dwelling as a long flight with nothing else to do. At some point I'll be fine and looking forward to Barcelona - but I'm not there yet."

Ricciardo's saving grace is that the mid-season test at Mugello takes place next week, and he said he was looking forward to driving on the track in a Formula One car.

"After a couple of days in the simulator it's off to the factory and then down to Mugello for the test. That's going to be full-on too. The team will undoubtedly have a few new things to try out and there's plenty of stuff from China and Bahrain that we need to test out a little bit more under different conditions. From what the engineers tell me, we are going to have a very full job list to work through.

"I haven't driven at Mugello since 2007 when I did it in Italian Formula Renault. It was my favourite circuit during that championship and it's one of my top five circuits in Europe - maybe one of my top five in the whole world - and in an F1 car it's going to be awesome. The two Arrabbiata right handers are very interesting."

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