Following his highs in the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo has had two relatively sedate races in Canada and France where his teammate Max Verstappen has finished on the podium.
The Australian qualified fifth for the French Grand Prix, starting behind his teammate but at the start he lost out to Renault’s Carlos Sainz when Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas collided.
Verstappen moved to second behind Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, followed by Sainz and Ricciardo. The Australian then recovered to get himself into the podium position on Lap 8 after clearing Sainz at ease.
The Dutchman build on a good gap to Ricciardo by that time but the Australian brought down the gap to around two seconds when Verstappen made the pit stop. Ricciardo’s race looked fine until Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen started to catch him up.
The Finn was nearly 10 seconds behind Ricciardo after his pit stop, but with the Red Bull having a front wing damage, it meant the Ferrari had it easy to claw into Ricciardo’s lead and eventually pass him for third on Lap 46.
With Vettel at a distance, Ricciardo finished fourth to bring home a wounded Red Bull which he reckons was damaged just before his pit stop causing huge amount of understeer – and post the stop, the right wing just clipped off to add to his misery.
“It was going OK actually in the first part of the race,” he started. “We were quite fast. Towards the end of the first stint, we had really good pace and then when we pitted, the team reported that I had some front wing damage.
“It seemed it happened two laps before the pit stop because I had reported of a sudden understeer when we were going quite fast. We dropped off a lot of pace immediately. After the pit stop, we suffered a bit more with the understeer.
“The team couldn’t fix it [the damage], they just saw it and we went back out, and a few laps after that the right part of the front wing broke as well. In the end, we had a very damaged car and I obviously tried the best I could with Kimi.
“But with the car we had it was not much of a chance in the end. Before that, the first corner was a bit of a shamble and I saw some cars cut through and avoid the incident. I don’t know if anyone gained an advantage [through it].
“But I think in the end, before the damage, we were quite fast. I felt [before the race that] having more downforce would not have been good for us, but I had a pretty good pace. I am still positive with the pace and I think we will convert a podium in the next two races.”
With the troubles Bottas faced to finish only seventh in the race, Ricciardo took back third in the drivers’ standings from the Finn as he now has 96 points from eight races to 92 for the Mercedes driver.