Daniel Ricciardo dished out one of the best driving performances you’ll ever see on the race track to give himself and the Red Bull team a huge boost in their bid to rise up the charts in the driver’s and the constructor’s championship.
It was the perfect manual for ‘in-race overtaking’ and something that Verstappen should re-visit and engrain into his system.
Ricciardo was extremely pleased after the win, as obviously it took a lot out of him to get past the drivers in front of him.
“It was hectic,” said Ricciardo.
“I heard ‘Safety Car’ in Turn 14 and they said ‘we’re gonna double stop ‘come come in the box’ and yeah, it happened very quickly but yeah, very decisive move, winning moves also from the team so thanks a lot and yeah, fat lip and all I got the win.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to lick the stamp and send it so there we go, I enjoyed it very much.
“Obviously, we had the soft tyre so I knew I could always get a little bit more out of the braking than them so a lot of the time you get one chance to try so I made the most of the opportunity.” he added.
Ricciardo was in a good mood at the podium, joking about how he almost pulled out of that overtaking move on Bottas.
“Yeah, it was close you know, I think it was hard but fair but I saw him defend so I wanted to go shallow up but then he came a bit more so I thought about pulling out, no, I’m just kidding! No, I knew there would always be enough room and then the tyres had pretty good grip so… Worst case I went wide and I would have another crack somewhere else.” the Australian said.
Ricciardo was thankful to his team for having changed the failed power unit in just two hours.
“I don’t know what it is, I don’t seem to win boring races,” joked the Australian.
“They’re all pretty fun so that was unexpected, you know, put ourselves 24 hours ago I thought we may be starting at the back of the grid so just firstly thanks to the boys yesterday. I thanked them after qualifying but today is the real reward for that work so thank you to everyone at Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, the mechanics worked their butts off.” he concluded.
