Daniel Ricciardo joked he would like Nelson Piquet Jr back on the Formula 1 grid to help his Singapore Grand Prix efforts after a "miserable" qualifying at the Marina Bay Circuit.
The RB driver failed to escape Q1 elimination on a weekend where his future in F1 has been put in doubt, with rumours swirling that he will be replaced by Liam Lawson from the next race, the United States Grand Prix, onwards.
Referencing the crashgate scandal that helped Fernando Alonso take victory in the 2008 Singapore GP when then-Renault team-mate Piquet Jr deliberately crashed to cause a safety car, Ricciardo suggested he would need such a case to secure a positive result.
"Hopefully, [we get] a well-timed safety car," he said. "Bring Piquet back, and let's make it happen."
Despite the added pressure, Friday's performance provided optimism of a top-10 berth at the end of qualifying, only for a switch to softs to derail his form. Added to his pain was team-mate Yuki Tsunoda's effort to reach Q3 for the first time since Hungary – with the Japanese driver going on to qualify in eighth place.
"We didn't really change much," said Ricciardo, when asked why the pace had dropped.
"We were in a good place yesterday so we were pretty upbeat about it, we weren't chasing our tail. Honestly, the medium this morning was good, it felt like we started off on the same foot as yesterday but then I put the soft on and I was nowhere.
"So we did a bit of fine-tuning for quali and I thought we would be OK, but again, I wasn't comfortable on the soft.
"It was... I would say miserable because we were somewhere yesterday, genuinely, and we didn't expect... there wasn't any big mistakes but I knew when I crossed the line that it wasn't quick. It just didn't feel that nice.
"This morning, you could say that 'oh that soft didn't work' but we had three of them today and we weren't competitive on any of them."
On whether the result hurt more because of the speculation over his F1 future, Ricciardo replied: "Yeah, of course it would be nice just to leave a statement.
"Obviously, the Q1 thing, that sucks. With all the s*** going on, I honestly felt [it] would be good today. So that's why I'm more just like, how did we end up [out] in Q1?
"I try to be optimistic but today was a very pessimistic day, so I'll go drown in my ice bath."
