Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo is making it a habit of being best of the rest behind the dominant Silver Arrows duo, the Australian again doing the business at the United States Grand Prix by finishing third.
He might have even been second had a Virtual Safety Car period not played into the hands of his rivals. He spoke after the race at Circuit of the Americas.
We’ve got to talk about the start. From your perspective, were you a bit surprised Nico went to the right? How did you read it and talk us through how you got ahead?
DR: Yeah, I think the actual launch itself didn’t seem that much stronger than the Mercedes on the soft tyres so I was hoping it would go a bit better but then, yeah, Nico opted to go to the outside so I had some room on the inside there. Yeah, I got one at least. I was obviously hoping to get two but that was better than nothing and then yeah, I think the first part of the race we sort of just seemed to… everyone just seemed to have similar pace. I guess Lewis was probably controlling it at the front but we seemed at that stage to be able to hold on to second and then the virtual safety car, I think we lost ten seconds it worked out to be, with Nico. I believe after the pit stops we would have had about five seconds on him. And then after the virtual safety car he had close to five seconds on me so that was frustrating, I guess. It just would have been interesting, even if he caught me at the end, just to at least have a fight. I think the race, after the virtual safety car, became a bit… not that exciting. I guess without it it would have made it a bit more spicy at the end. That was that. Unfortunately third was the outcome but it was still nice to be on the podium. It’s a cool place, I’ve always loved it here for everything: the anthem before the race kind of gives you goosebumps and then the crowd… obviously on the podium is pretty cool. It’s been a good weekend.
Does it make it worse that the virtual safety car was actually triggered by your own teammate?
DR: Absolutely sir. When I saw Max out there I thought ‘ah, hell. My boy’s done it again!’ So anyways, that was a devastational moment but we’ll keep soldiering on. We still got some points over Ferrari so I’m pretty pleased with that.
Daniel, what are your thoughts regarding the upcoming three races if you can get close to these guys again?
DR: We’ll try. I think looking at it, on paper I would say Abu Dhabi is probably where I fancy my best chances. It’s been a strong circuit for me and I think us as a team have normally been pretty good there so that’s probably one. Mexico is still new. I think the surface is going to be a lot different when we go there next week, it will be more rubbered in. I think it’s going to be a completely different track to last year and we will see. Brazil, it’s been a while since we had the sort of magical Brazil downforce so maybe we can get one of those this year and have a chance. We’ll keep trying, keep doing what we can. Obviously they’re hard to beat but maybe next time the virtual safety car will help us out. We’ll see.
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