Ricciardo ‘content’ with fourth after engine driveability struggles

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo admits he struggled to make the most of Renault’s updated Formula 1 engine having struggled with driveability throughout the Canadian Grand Prix. 

Ricciardo was unable to match the pace of Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen across the Montreal weekend as he lagged behind the Dutchman in all three practice sessions and qualifying, before finishing one place behind Verstappen in the race.

When speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race, Ricciardo revealed he was unable to extract as much from Renault’s new power unit upgrade compared to his teammate after encountering driveability issues in his RB14.

“We had the upgrade this weekend and my car struggled more with the driveability, the calibration. It could have been better, let’s say that,” he explained.

“I was just struggling to keep the tyres under control with that driveability. I would say it explains some of the inconsistency. But also Max was driving really well all weekend, so I won’t take that away from him.”

Although he finished 12 seconds behind Verstappen, Ricciardo was able to make progress by jumping Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen at the start and pulled off an successful overcut strategy to leapfrog Lewis Hamilton during the pit stop phase. 

Ricciardo – who slipped to fourth behind Valtteri Bottas in the drivers’ standings – remained positive about his position as an outsider for the championship, despite knowing he will be hit by grid penalties in the near-future following a string of reliability failures this year.

“I’m relatively content for a fourth place,” the Australian said. “I think we chose to qualify on the Hypersoft, we knew it would be aggressive at the beginning but we knew we had to use that. We got the jump on Kimi and then the overcut on Lewis so I actually think we did all we could with that strategy so I was pretty happy.  

“We got some good points and I believe we gained two points in the championship because we got Lewis. So we’ll see what happens. It will bite us soon, but we’ll try and stay on top while we can.”