An “angry” Daniel Ricciardo lamented a missed opportunity after his RB Formula 1 team “f***ed up” his race strategy at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo ran in front of team-mate Yuki Tsunoda during a very short opening stint on medium tyres, but was stuck behind Alex Albon and Kevin Magnussen.
The Williams and the Haas pitted on lap 6 before RB called Ricciardo in at the end of the next tour, with the Australian spending his second stint behind the same cars as a consequence.
Then lagging more than 20 seconds behind Tsunoda, Ricciardo pitted again on lap 28 – one lap before the Japanese driver even had his first and only tyre change of the race.
Ricciardo went on to finish just 12th, 25 seconds off his team-mate, who scored important points in ninth. In a context where his future is at stake, the veteran did not conceal his frustration with the way the contest played out.
Asked if he was a bit disappointed, Ricciardo sighed: “Massively. Why they pitted me when they did at the beginning was…
“Two cars jumped us at the start with a soft tyre. That’s fine. Let them go. They pit, and we follow them, to then just be on their strategy.
“They’ve just come in, we have a clear track, and we decide to pit behind them and put ourselves in a DRS train. And it’s like, then on the same tyre, all on a hard, so…”
Daniel Ricciardo, RB F1 Team VCARB 01
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
The RB driver clarified that he “didn’t have time” to question his engineers’ strategy decision.
“It’s a late call, ‘box box box’ and you pit,” he recounted. “But honestly, as soon as I’m pulling in the pits, I’m questioning. But you can’t [debate it so late]. You know, you get called in Turn 13, and you have to react.”
Ricciardo never ran in the top 10 subsequently, spending some time in 11th from laps 46 to 54 before Lance Stroll overtook him – the Aston Martin driver was enjoying much fresher rubber, having made his second pitstop 17 laps later than his opponent.
“Then, Stroll’s catching me a second a lap and maybe more, and they’re saying, you know, it’s really important to keep him behind, and what do you want me to do?” Ricciardo pondered. “You’ve pitted me so early, I’m on older tyres.
“I’m also being expected to fight when we’re not really in a fight anymore. So that was also frustrating. There were times where I just felt like we… the bed was made.”
Ranking this race among the most frustrating of his career, Ricciardo saw his team-mate’s result as a case of what could have been, and was all the more aggravated by race engineer Pierre Hamelin seemingly not offering the apology he expected following the chequered flag.
“We had the pace and we basically gave Yuki the race that we had in front of us. And we both could have done that. And we didn’t,” Ricciardo said.
“Honestly, I was expecting more. On the in-lap I was waiting for ‘Sorry, we fucked up’. And I didn’t get it. So that made me even more angry.”
Team principal Laurent Mekies later owned up to making a mistake with Ricciardo’s strategy.
“Unfortunately, we got it wrong with Daniel and pitted him too early in heavy traffic, which lost him a chance to fight for points,” Mekies stated.
“His pace had been extremely strong all weekend long, and he demonstrated that again in the final stint of the race when he was finally able to find some free air and fight his way back.
“We certainly share his frustration, and we will learn and come back stronger next week.”
Ricciardo still lies 13th in the drivers’ championship with 11 points to his name – precisely half of Tsunoda’s tally.
