Ricciardo ended up a full 0.820 seconds slower than pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen in Q3 around the streets of Monte Carlo after encountering traffic during his final run.

The Australian had previously predicted a three-way pole fight between Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull on the strength of his times in Thursday practice, when he ended up a close second to points leader Sebastian Vettel.

But Ricciardo criticised Red Bull for putting him out in traffic for his final run, when we had clear track behind him - something he described as an "obvious and basic mistake" by his team.

"In Q3 we committed just to doing one lap," he explained. "In Q1 and Q2 it seemed like the rear tyres were going off doing that extra lap, and some others looked like they were starting to do it.

"To go with strategy, we knew we needed to go hard on the outlaps, to get a clear lap out of the pits to warm the tyres up. In the last run I came out with traffic.

"It seemed like I had such a clear track behind, I don’t know why we didn’t wait to put me out in clear air – unless the timer was going down and we weren’t going to make it, which I don’t think was the case – it just seemed like we made a stupid, silly error.

"Maybe I’m missing something, but it seemed an obvious and basic mistake."

Asked if he could still challenge from fifth place on the grid, Ricciardo replied: "The race is today, to be honest. Qualifying is pretty much everything around here.

"We’re better than fifth, from practice I didn’t even go a second quicker, we underachieved so much. And this is the last place you want to do that. Frustrating today, not happy at all."

Ricciardo's Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen took fourth place on the grid, 0.318s off the pace of Raikkonen.