Daniel Ricciardo has explained the circumstances behind his costly error in Sunday’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, likening it to a series of errors made by his former teammate Sebastian Vettel.
Sitting in P10 on lap 31, Ricciardo race came undone when he lost the rear of his car while battling with McLaren’s Carlos Sainz into the right-hander at Village.
Taking the inside line, Ricciardo spun as he tried to apply throttle on corner exit, which he put down to the related loss of downforce on the left side of his car.
“Unfortunately, the last few years it’s a bit of a ‘Seb spin’ when you’re the inside car, then as soon as you get on the throttle you lose it,” he joked afterwards to reporters.
“He did it with me in Austin in 2018. It’s one I don’t think I’d experienced yet.
“You are there and I could see Carlos and you’re trying to squeeze a little bit but not have contact, and then as soon as I opened the wheel and then got on-throttle it just went around.
“When you are in such close vicinity to another car on that side angle, you lose a chunk of downforce that’s normally coming in from that side and keeping the car down so I think it’s just a very quick loss of downforce and it can obviously catch you out.
“It was a little bit of salt in the wounds. By that point we were already on the back foot, I don’t want to say it was over but then with that I just wanted to roll over a little bit and just put my head down! Not a fun afternoon in the end.”
Having pitted five laps prior to the error for hards, Ricciardo had to pit again soon after due to the damage he had sustained to his tyres.
Asked whether in retrospect it was the right call to two-stop or, like Renault teammate Esteban Ocon who finished P8, he should’ve attempted a one-stop strategy, the Australian suggested the latter was the better option.
“I don’t think we wanted to admit it but we knew that was a little bit of a concern, having to use two mediums in the race if we were doing a two stop, which was the plan.
“The first set of mediums wasn’t bad. I don’t think we were lightning fast but I think we were hanging in there with the Racing Points, so it felt like it was going good actually.
“Then we pitted and put another medium on to follow the two stop, and that second medium just didn’t work, so we had to pit shortly after for the hard and we were out of sequence.
“We were in that battle I don’t think we should have been in, but we were in that battle and I spun trying to hold Carlos off.
“I killed those tyres by the spin, so it was a race that kind of was here and just went into a bit of a hole.
“In the briefing now, in hindsight, we go longer with the first stint and try to put the hard on and do a one stop.”