Daniel Ricciardo made no secret of his surprise after qual⭕ifying fourth for Renault in Canada on Saturday, conceding he did not expect the team’s recent progress to 💝lift him onto the second row of the grid.

Ricciardo charged to Renault’s best qualifying result in almost nine years as he to♓ok P4 in qualifying at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, trailing only Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc in Qꦗ3.

After a difficult start to the seaso💙n following his winter move from Red Bull, Ricciardo was buoyed by the result, and admitted he did not expect to have finished so highly in the session.

“I don't want to say I can't believe it. For me to be this happy with a fourth, ꦜit really means something,” Ricc🧸iardo said.

�🍰�“For the team as well, I told them on the radio to enjoy this, we'll think about the race in a few hours or even in the morning, but right now, we need to enjoy it because it's awesome.

“We've got three Q3s in a row now, but a fourth is massive. I think just over a tenth from third. I still don'ꦛt really know where this speed came from - I mean I do, but we didn't expect it to equate to a fourth place.

“It's good, making progress, and personally I guess each weekend I'm in the car, I'm feeling more and more at home withꦯ them and learning to get on top of it. It's all starting to come together quite nicely.”

Ricciardo will ꦐbe the leading driver starting tomorrow’s race on the Soft comp💞ound tyre, giving the Australian hope he may be able to fight with the Medium runners ahead off the start.

However, he stressed his focus was on bringing home a g൲o🌸od haul of points.

“I'm pretty confident we'll be OK tomorrow. The group we're in, it's hard to say obviously, I'm surrounded by a few quicker cars, but on the Soft tyre, maybe we could be in the top three in the🌊 start if the cars in fro♔nt start on the Mediums,” Ricciardo said.

“You never know what's goin꧙g to happen. I think once the pace settles, the top teams will probably stretch it out a little bit, but we'll try and remain inside the top four, top five, and get some points that we maybe missed out on in Monaco.”

Additional reporting by Julianne Cerasoli.