Ricciardo “overachieved” with milestone points-finish in Austria

“Swip[ing] out of the paddock with a smile”, Daniel Ricciardo ended his milestone 250th race by securing two points in the Austrian Grand Prix, a result the Australian believes was welcomed overachievement. 

The ‘Honey Badger’ described the race as “hard-fought”, admitting that he owed his race engineer an apology for his radio silence across the 71 laps.

“I semi-apologised to Pierre (Hamelin) after the race, I was like ‘yeah sorry, I couldn’t talk that much today’,” Ricciardo said.

“I was pretty locked in.”

With points well and truly on the cards from his starting position in 11th place, the Australian’s launch off the line nearly rewarded him with an early entry into the top ten.

Charging around the outside of Turn 1, Ricciardo made up places, however, lost them as quickly as he gained them when he was forced wide by Pierre Gasly.

With both Gasly and Kevin Magnussen getting the jump on the RB driver at that moment, he found himself running in P12.

“It was a tough race and I think we were a bit more on the defence, so it took a lot of concentration and effort,” Ricciardo said.

“I had a good start on the outside and was looking good, but then I lost a couple of positions as there was no more room and I had to go wide. 

“Once we settled after the start of the race, I think we did well.”

Ricciardo was one of the first drivers to strategically stop, swapping out his medium tyres before the assumed pit window on Lap 10 and rejoining in P18.

10 laps later and in the middle of his stint on the hard tyre, Ricciardo was making moves up the order. 

Down the inside of the tight Turn 3, Ricciardo completed a successful overtake on Zhou Guanyu, accelerating into the distance as the Sauber car was rear-ended by Fernando Alonso.

Alonso, despite receiving a 10-second penalty for causing the collision with Zhou, was unaffected by the incident and instead caught up to Ricciardo’s DRS range on Lap 28.

With his defensive efforts remaining strong, Ricciardo held off the Aston Martin before his second pitstop as a DRS train formed behind.

He pulled into the pits for another fresh set of hard tyres on Lap 37, rejoining the Austrian Grand Prix in P16.

Daniel Ricciardo driving on track during the Austrian Grand Prix. Image: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool.

Upon return, Ricciardo was free of threat from behind, with his closest rival being a wounded Charles Leclerc three seconds back.

Being an early stopper, Ricciardo continued to move up the order as his surrounding drivers relinquished their tyres. 

In the final stint, the #3 battled closely with Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly for the final points position in P10, however, as a result of the leaders colliding and Norris tumbling down the order, the pressure was somewhat eased as all three moved safely into the points.

It became a matter of how many points he’d be earning at the chequered flag as opposed to “hanging on the points”, with the trio running in a DRS train to the line.

Unable to make a move on Magnussen, but crucially holding Gasly off, Ricciardo crossed the line of his 250th Grand Prix start in 9th place, earning two points in a bounce-back weekend.

“The team did a good job with the strategy to secure the position over the Alpines, and then I feel like I drove a good defence against Fernando [Alonso] and then Pierre [Gasly] in the last stint. 

“At the end actually, the last few laps I had DRS on Magnussen so we had a little bit of pace, probably at the end when the tyres were getting older, but for most of the stint, I felt like we weren’t a very fast car in our group.

“We were just hanging on by the skin of our teeth.

“Obviously Haas out-scored us today, but look, we got some points, a bit of damage limitation so it’s been a better weekend.”

In the drivers’ standings, the RB driver now has 11 points to his name, boosting his team’s total the 30 points as of Round 11.

“I look back now, the last three [races] have definitely been better, and leaving the Sunday feeling like we’ve got pretty much the most out of it.

“There’s always going to be areas which I can do better and improve, but as a whole, we kind of swipe out of the paddock with a smile and feel like we ticked most boxes so that’s good, got to keep that up.

“It’s a nice feeling to fight and to drive a clean race and obviously, bring a couple points home for the team when I think deep down, we’ll look back at our pace and say ‘yeah, maybe didn’t belong in the points today’, so I feel like in some parts we overachieved and we’ll maybe give ourselves a pat on the back.”

“Now we’ll try to make another good step forward for Silverstone and then maybe that puts us in another fight for points.”

Remaining on a high, the #3 has the British Grand Prix ahead of him in seven days’ time, with the weekend returning to a conventional format for the last race of the triple header.

On-track action for FP1 kicks off at 9:30 PM on Friday, July 5th.

Image: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool

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