Daniel Ricciardo 'a long way off' and lacking confidence in Bahrain

While Hulkenberg was an impressive fifth and best of the rest behind the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers, Ricciardo was down in 15th having struggled for pace on his soft tyre run.

"It was a bit difficult, particularly on the qualifying sim in the afternoon," said Ricciardo.

"I was a long way off. So we're just trying to figure out why.

"Once we did the long run, on the high fuel, it seemed a bit more representative again, but I certainly feel like it can be better.

"We just want to make sure everything's correct and symmetrical.

"I think [we need to] get the feeling in the car and the confidence.

"Today I certainly struggled with that, so we're just trying to figure out what we can do better to give me the feeling that I can push the car and find the limit."

Asked what he was missing, Ricciardo replied: "I'll try and answer it well instead of just saying 'more grip'.

"Traction, but it's not just traction, there's a few things we're trying to improve - some driveability, some ride and some response of the car, things like this."

Ricciardo insisted that all was not lost, and that his team could turn things around for qualifying on Saturday.

"The weekend's not done by any means," he said.

"If the guys say, 'Oh yeah, the car was completely out, something was wrong, we made a mistake', that probably makes me sleep better, but I can't rely on that.

"I think there is some tweaking we can do from an engineering point of view. I think little things will actually give us quite a lot of lap time right now, just there are some things with the car that was also taking confidence away from me.

"So you combine a bit of time in the car and then time in me, it can turn around quite quickly.

"On the flipside, on the positive, Nico's quick so for sure it's there in the car, we've just got to try and understand why we weren't able to get it out today."

Hulkenberg downplayed his strong performance, noting that he was not happy with the balance of the car.

"If the Friday's good, I'm not one of those guys that read into it too much," he said.

"Other people didn't reach their full potential today. Obviously the timesheet looks good.

"The long run the feeling wasn't that great in the car, to be honest.

"We are far off with the balance in my opinion. We need to keep working and keep finding lap time.

"Things are very tight in the midfield. We perhaps had a better Friday than the others but I think tomorrow when the others sort their stuff out it will be very tight again."