Ricciardo set a time that would have been good enough for 10th place in Q1, but it was quickly deleted for a track limits offence after he went wide and off the track at the top of Eau Rouge.
The AlphaTauri driver admitted that the mistake was costly and stressed that he would have been faster had he not gone offline.
"I think as well I lost a bit of time from the track limits," he said when asked by Autosport about the frustration of his deleted laptime.
"Basically I tried to take Eau Rouge full, like I entered full and I felt the car start to move. And so I had a little lift, and it just then put me a bit offline and then I was kind of on the wetter part of the track, and I couldn't really do much more.
"I kind of just had to let the car go. I tried to save it. Yeah, frustrating obviously.
"On one hand this is what quali is. My intentions were good to try and take it full, I thought it could have been done, but obviously a little error then put us out."
Ricciardo admitted that he was looking forward to having a second chance to show his one-lap pace in the shootout session that decides the sprint grid.
"Right now how I feel I'm very happy that I get another chance tomorrow," he said. "That's kind of numbed a little bit of the pain.
"And yeah, I think it's back to the laptops and get into the data. I think we'll probably have similar conditions tomorrow, so see how that puts us.
Source: Autosport