MORE: Lewis Hamilton storms to Monza pole
The Australian will start ninth on the grid after running wide during his final qualifying lap on Saturday night.
The Red Bull young gun had expected a spot in the top five to be achievable, but was three 10ths slower than his team-mate Sebastian Vettel, and narrowly ahead of 10th place man Sergio Perez.
A bold tyre strategy is unlikely to help Red Bull.
With the Pirelli tyres expected to last throughout the race, most of the field is expected to stop just the once.
That means Ricciardo will have to take some risks on track if he is to fight his way into the upper echelons of the points.
“Realistically we knew we would struggle more here [than Spa],” Ricciardo told reporters after qualifying.
“Once everyone bolted on less downforce we knew it would be trickier.
“But still we would have loved better than eighth or ninth, we were aiming for a top five.
“We knew that would be a bit of a stretch but sixth was still a bit of a target but it was a bit off that.
“Obviously we will try and make up for it tomorrow but with a one stop race it doesn’t leave us too much opportunity with strategy,” he said.
“So it’s probably a just a case of having a good start, maybe taking a few risks and hoping comes off – a good thing, not something comes off the car.”
But Ricciardo admitted that his car’s lack of straight-line speed could make scoring a big haul of points a tough ask, even if Red Bull’s race pace is expected to be better than its competitiveness over a single lap.
“It [a lack of straight-line speed] doesn’t help us here, we seem to lose quite a bit there,” he said.
“Maybe our wing is working better, or the others are working better with the DRS and getting more gain where we don’t get as much.
“But the long run did look a lot more competitive. So with high-fuel and no DRS maybe that will give us more competitiveness but I don’t know.”