The Toro Rosso driver had qualified a breakthrough sixth in Bahrain last season, still the best effort of his Formula 1 career, but had a poor first lap.
He fell to 16th, behind team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne (who started 17th) and came home 15th.
Another strong qualifying performance means he will start the Chinese GP from seventh and the Australian believes he can do a better job in the race this time.
“It’s been nearly a year since then and I’ve had plenty of time to reflect,” he said.
“It’s something I have in the back of my mind. I’ve been hanging out to get another Q3, another chance to fix everything I didn’t do that day.
“I never repeated it last year so I definitely learned from it. It was a hard but good lesson.
“I’m going to target the guys around me and the guys in front. All the cars in front should be quicker, but if I can try and stay with them by the end it won’t be too bad for us.
“I can’t wait to do what I know I can.”
TORO ROSSO PROVING ITS POTENTIAL
Ricciardo believes Toro Rosso had to try and see what it could do on the soft tyres, unlike some of his Q3 rivals, and thinks seventh demonstrates the progress made with the STR8.
“For Q3 I definitely wanted to try and post a time, give it a crack and see how we went. It paid off well. If we’d been ninth or 10th it’d be a question mark, but to get seventh was really good for us.
“I think today we had to go for it. I think we surprised a few people and surprised ourselves.
“It all started from yesterday. We weren’t extremely fast, but the way we worked was the best Friday we’ve had all season, the best day of testing.
“It looks like we’re on the right path. We’re definitely better off than we were earlier in the season.”
Nanni Galli Oscar Alfredo Gálvez Fred Gamble Howden Ganley Frank Gardner
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