Japan: Lap one crash denies Daniel’s push for points

Daniel’s hopes of pushing forwards into the top 10 after his best qualifying of 2024 end abruptly after just the third opening-lap DNF of his career

Race data

Japan (Round 4 of 24): 5-7 April, 2024
Suzuka, 5.807km, 53 laps
Qualified: 11th
Finished: DNF (crash, lap 1)
Laps per position: N/A
Pit stops/tyres: N/A
Fastest lap: N/A
Points this event: 0
Points this season: 0 (17th in world championship)

Daniel's download

“That’s in the category of ‘just one of those things’. With 24 races, there’s the probability that these tyres of things can happen – and it obviously sucks when they do. A lap one incident is the last thing you want as a driver.

“With the incident, if I could wind the clock back I would have started on the soft tyres because me and (RB teammate) Yuki (Tsunoda) just got gobbled up on the medium. It was weird because the cars in front of us looked like they got off the line well, but we just didn’t have the grip. By Turn 2, as soon as I got on the throttle I was still struggling and I saw (Aston Martin’s Lance) Stroll on my outside, and I was trying to hold him off. As I’ve started to come back for Turn 3, (Williams’ Alex) Albon is there and his traction was so much better on the soft. I don’t even know if he wanted to be there. But there was obviously not enough room.

“I don’t look at today as some sort of ‘oh man, this year’ or ‘when it rains it pours’, or whatever. It was just a singular moment. It’s a shame because it would have been nice to get a race under our belt and try to show a little bit of something I felt we were starting to show in qualifying. We excited for a good race day, and it all fell away straight away. There’s this massive build-up, and then you feel like you have this massive energy you don’t know what to do with.

“I’m testing on Tuesday, and then we have China. There were some positives to take away from this weekend despite how it finished so we’ll work on those, that’s what we’ll focus on.”

DR’s race recap

* Qualified 11th, and crashed out in incident with Albon/Williams at Turn 3 on the opening lap.

DR’s next destination

Round 5: China (Shanghai International Circuit), 21 April
China in 2019 (most recent race): qualified 7th, finished 7th
In F1: 8 races, 1 win, 1 podium, 1 fastest lap, 75 points, 7 points finishes
Best finish: 1st (2018)