Daniel Ricciardo limited in Mexico Grand Prix practice after gearbox issue
Daniel Ricciardo was limited to just over thirty laps on Friday in Mexico after suffering a gearbox issue.
Daniel Ricciardo was just fourteenth fastest on Friday before retiring with a gearbox issue. (Supplied)
Ricciardo was fourteenth quickest in Free Practice 1 as McLaren battled balance issues, before the team took him out of Free Practice 2 to investigate the potential issue.
"Unfortunately, we didn’t really get much done this afternoon," he said.
"We had an issue in FP2, so we only completed the Hard run."
"These things happen, and we’ll just have to get into it tomorrow."
Despite the limited running, Ricciardo was able to keep his spirits up for the rest of the weekend.
"We don’t have any time to waste so we’ll get amongst it."
"We’ve got a few challenges ahead but we’ll be alright."
"We got enough information from Lando today to be able to pick it up tomorrow.”
Andrea Stella, McLaren's Executive Director, Racing, went further into the issues plaguing the team on Friday.
"Today’s practice sessions showed us what we expected to see here in Mexico City."
"The altitude pushes us to tune several aspects of our set-up to cope with the cooling requirements and low downforce levels that are a feature of racing on this circuit."
"What we weren’t expecting was the need to curtail Daniel’s afternoon session."
"We stopped him early after seeing some markers in the data, related to his gearbox, that we thought prudent to explore."
Ricciardo had predicted a close battle with Ferrari on-track in Mexico, something Stella said was made more challenging after seeing the Friday data.
"This leaves us with work to do to ensure we are competitive in qualifying and the race."
"It seems very tight this weekend with Ferrari and AlphaTauri in good shape – but we know what we have to do to meet our objectives over the next two days."
