Source – XPBimages
Angered by the team’s lack of an apology, Daniel Ricciardo did not hold back in criticizing RB for how it handled his Hungarian GP.
Daniel Ricciardo was left seething after what he believes was a bungled strategy by Red Bull during the Hungarian Grand Prix. Starting from ninth place at the Hungaroring, Ricciardo and his teammate Yuki Tsunoda quickly fell behind rivals on softer tires. The Williams of Alexander Albon and Kevin Magnussen’s Haas pushed the Red Bull pair out of the top 10 as they settled into the race on medium Pirelli compounds.
A pivotal moment came when those on the soft tires pitted after six laps. Ricciardo, on his team’s orders, followed suit one lap later, a decision he would later criticize. This early pit stop proved disastrous, leaving Ricciardo stuck in traffic and ultimately finishing outside the points in P12. Adding to his frustration was the absence of an apology from his team.
“Massively,” Ricciardo responded when asked if he was disappointed with his result. He couldn’t comprehend why his team pitted him when they did, forcing him into a DRS train on the same hard compound tires as his competitors. “I’ve had a lot of races, I’ve had a lot of frustrating ones, but that’s up there because we had the pace… Honestly, I was expecting more. On the in-lap, I was waiting for: ‘sorry, we messed up.’ And I didn’t get it. So that made me even more angry.”
Ricciardo’s teammate Tsunoda, meanwhile, fared better with a strategy the Australian felt he should have been on. Tsunoda was brought in to stop only on lap 29 of the 70-lap race, by which time Ricciardo had already pitted for the second time. Tsunoda managed to hold onto a points-paying position, finishing in ninth, the spot Ricciardo had started the race.
“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 lamented. When asked if he had questioned the call by Red Bull, Ricciardo explained there was no time. “It’s a late call: ‘box box box’ and you pit. But honestly, as soon as I’m pulling in the pits, I’m questioning, but you can’t – you get called in Turn 13 and you have to react.”
Reflecting on the race, Ricciardo noted, “We talk about strategies, but two cars jumped us at the start with a soft tire. That’s fine. Let them go. They pit and we follow them, to then just be on their strategy. We would have had clear air and a chance to – I think, from what I understand – do Yuki’s race.”
