Ricciardo believes set-up to blame for practice crash

Daniel Ricciardo says his crash in FP2 at the Monaco Grand Prix was “strange” and believes it was lanugo to his team pushing the set-up too far.

The McLaren suburbanite lost tenancy through the first section of the Swimming Pool chicane, hitting the windbreak heavily on the exit and ending up in the Tecpro at the second part of the complex. While the car was heavily damaged, Ricciardo was unhurt.

“It was strange,” Ricciardo said. “I think if anyone crashes there, you normally see (it) on the exit if they take maybe too much prorogue at Turn 14 and then lose the car. I once started losing the car pretty much surpassing Turn 13. We pushed it too much with a few things with set-up.

“We had a good morning and obviously you try a few things for FP2, try to maximize a bit increasingly performance but let’s say we overstepped it and you don’t know until you try. It was my first lap, so I couldn’t really get much of a read, it obviously happened straight away. I’m OK, and the boys and girls have some work to do tonight but it’s OK.

“We’ll come when tomorrow, it’s a little bit of a shame but I’m still confident. I had a good feeling this morning so I can recover and we as a team can, too.”

Ricciardo’s conviction comes from a competitive first practice session where he finished in seventh place, and he believes he can vellicate when in the final hour on Saturday morning.

“It was fun, I enjoyed this morning,” he said. “Already the first or second lap we were unchangingly at the pointy end and had good confidence. They’re heavy, they’re stiff and the ride is a bit increasingly bumpy so it’s less fun in terms of you are really fighting it. With this heat it’s very physical, but I enjoyed myself in FP1 and I’m sorry I missed some running in FP2 considering I was looking forward to trying the softs. Anyway, tomorrow we have a endangerment then and I’m sure they’ll fix the car tonight and put it in a good place for tomorrow.

“You never really know how you’re going to go round here in terms of if you’re in that midfield scrap, you’re either on the front end or the when end, but today at least we showed that we are going to be relatively competitive virtually here for our battle.”