Ricciardo certified fifteenth and ultimately completed 14th of the 17 automobiles nonetheless working on the chequered flag, having struggled for grip for a lot of the race.
Along with his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda retiring, the race was the primary time in 4 occasions that the Faenza outfit failed to attain, having previoulsy narrowed the hole to seventh-placed Williams to simply seven factors.
“I used to be coming into the race optimistic,” mentioned Ricciardo when requested about his race by Motorsport.com. “There was nonetheless a little bit of a actuality that possibly it is going to be okay, possibly it will not. Sadly, possibly it wasn’t.
“We knew [in] the race begins and restarts we’d battle, as a result of we have undoubtedly missed one thing right here this weekend, getting the tyre engaged on the slippery asphalt when it is nonetheless chilly, or a brand new tyre.
“However even with that, I felt, ‘okay, after a pair laps, we’ll get some temperature after which be capable of sort of get again on to the pack’. However we by no means actually received there. And I believe the restarts did not assist us.
“However that is not an excuse. It is simply one thing that we lacked this weekend, we actually struggled at the beginning of stints.
“As soon as it settled, there have been a couple of automobiles fading on the finish of the race. So we had a bit of bit extra tempo than them. However we nonetheless weren’t a prime 10 automotive. So, unlucky.”
Photograph by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Daniel Ricciardo, Scuderia AlphaTauri
He added: “I do know I have never performed a complete lot of races this yr. However I really feel like the next [other cars] is considerably more durable than final yr. So I am unsure if that is truth, but it surely undoubtedly feels that approach.
“So as soon as we began getting nearer, we broken the tyres. And that is what made it fairly troublesome for us.”
Ricciardo acknowledged that the excellent news was that the groups AlphaTauri is battling within the constructors’ championship – Williams, Haas and Alfa Romeo – additionally didn’t log factors forward of the Abu Dhabi finale.
“I’ll go glass half full,” he mentioned. “And our rivals did not rating, so it offers us a bit of glimmer of hope subsequent week to nonetheless have a crack.
“A little bit of an extended {old} race. And we had been working on a distinct stage of grip in comparison with the others. So I used to be getting overtaken on the skin of Flip 3, which take my phrase for it, the skin of Flip 3 is de facto, actually, actually slippery.
“So the truth that they had been getting me on the skin, I used to be like, man, we’re undoubtedly working in a distinct league! So we’ve received some homework to do.
“Subsequent week, it is a completely different story. So we’ll deal with that. However I believe there’s undoubtedly some post-race evaluation.”