Not an easy qualifying for Daniel Ricciardo: actual teammate but probably future former F1 driver Nico Hulkenberg, have beaten him being three slots ahead. The revenge after Singapore disaster disqualification needs to start here, for recovering a difficult first season in the midfield battle.

Obviously, since he spun on Friday first Practice, confidence has partially gone for the weekend’s day of single shot performance; the Aussie still declared that going into Q3 was the team target but we all know how much Daniel is suffering this situation:

Two (major) talking points from our Sochi Saturday, which are enough to raise numerous questions over the 2021 F1 grid.

“I’ve not been that fast all weekend, so to get into Q3 was pretty good. That was our target and we got there. I had to use an extra set in Q1 and that meant I only had one new tyre run at the end of Q3 and it wasn’t quick enough to be higher than tenth. We’ll do better tomorrow; we’re in a position to take points and we’ll be working hard to do that. Credit to Nico for his qualifying, he’s been fast this weekend.”

🇷🇺 #Quali 🇷🇺@HulkHulkenberg P7@danielricciardo P10#RSspirit #RussianGP pic.twitter.com/WkchccVTfH

— Renault F1 Team (@RenaultF1Team) September 28, 2019

The ultimate news of McLaren choosing Mercedes rather than continuing with Renault as their 2021 PU partner, may shaken a bit the Viry-Chatillon headquarters: loosing a customer team could be significantly harmful for financial results of the company; exactly what Daniel have looked into when deciding to leave the toxic environment at Red Bull: investments.