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Ricciardo: I'm not where I want to be

The McLaren driver is not happy with his qualifying performance at the Emilia Romagna GP despite his sixth place starting position for Sunday's race.

Daniel Ricciardo feels it may take "a few more races" before he is fully confident with his car. The McLaren driver outqualified teammate Lando Norris for a second consecutive Grand Prix but would have been four places behind the Brit had Norris' best lap not been deleted. Ricciardo has been off the pace throughout the weekend in Imola, not gelling with the MCL35M whilst Norris was on course to beat Red Bull's Max Verstappen. "If I look at Lando, I was always on the backfoot all weekend as far so there's still certainly time to find," Ricciardo told RacingNews365.com and other select members of the press. "I'm gonna try my best to find something overnight. I still need to get more out of the car and it took quite a while this weekend to try and get on top of it. "But I'm certainly still not where I want to be, it's probably just going to take time. The progress was really good through qualifying so I think that shows that more seat time will allow me to figure out where the limit is." Ricciardo struggled to adapt to Renault when he joined the team in 2019. It appears to be a similar story for the Australian at the moment with McLaren. "It's probably still another few races," explained Ricciardo. "But I don't want to already go into that mindset of 'yeah, next race I'm not going to be as quick'. "Each lap I turn is pretty crucial and I think every lap I turn I'm learning so I'm positive with the outcome of today [qualifying]. I'm certainly not doing cartwheels yet, but I'm content with the progress."

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