While McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was celebrating after joining his fellow Aussie as a Formula One race winner, Daniel Ricciardo was left to rue the RB strategy call that saw him sink to 12th at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The veteran Ricciardo’s future is in the spotlight again at a weekend where Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda crashed out in qualifying.
With just one race left — next week’s Belgian Grand Prix — before the mid-season break, Ricciardo appears to be the safest pair of hands if Red Bull boss Christian Horner makes a change to boost the constructors’ championship fight.
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And, if it comes, Ricciardo will welcome promotion for reasons beyond driving a faster car.
The 35-year-old fumed at his own team RB after being forced to make an early pit stop to chase rivals around him who had started on the soft tyre, and not receiving an apology for that decision ruining his day.
“You don’t want to pull in the pits. You get the call and you know this isn’t the thing to do but you get the call late and there’s no time to question it,” an exasperated Ricciardo said after the race.
“Because then if you miss a lap it’s even worse. But as soon as I pulled in, the cars on softs had pulled in, we’re on a medium, let’s go — let’s use our clear air, let’s use our pace we got.
“And then we come out in traffic and it’s DRS train. And for what? We’re all then on the same tyre and it was… that was one of the worst ones I’ve had in 250-something races.
“That was a long old frustrating race where I had a lot of… anger.”
Ricciardo said he just wanted an apology from his team after the chequered flag.
“I’m really trying to bite my tongue but you must know how I feel about the first stop,” he told engineer Pierre Hamelin, who only replied “ok, understood”.
Ricciardo added: “If you feel the same, please.”
Hamelin said: “We’ll review everything. We need to review everything. I don’t know what to say now.”
Speaking later, Ricciardo said he was “expecting more”.
“On the in-lap I was waiting for ‘sorry, we f***ed up’, and I didn’t get it. That made me even more angry,” he said.
Tsunoda was directly behind Ricciardo at the time of the Aussie’s first stop but did not get the same call, a one-stop strategy helping the Japanese driver to ninth place at the chequered flag.
Ricciardo was also critical of RB’s “frustrating” radio messages about blocking Lance Stroll, who would go on to finish 10th.
RB team principal Laurent Mekies praised Tsunoda’s race as “sensational” but only admitted “we got it wrong with Daniel”, also declining to make a public apology.
“(We) putted him too early in heavy traffic, which lost him a chance to fight for points,” Mekies said.
“His pace had been extremely strong all weekend long, and he demonstrated that again in the final stint where he was finally able to find some free air and fight his way back.
“We certainly share his frustration, and we will learn and come back stronger next week.”
Meanwhile, Piastri eschewed Ricciardo’s famous ‘shoey’ celebration on the podium and said he will craft his own legacy in F1.
“The shoey is Danny Ric’s thing,” Piastri smiled when asked about whether he would be following suit.
“I mean, I’m going to get roped into it because I’m an Aussie, but I don’t know. I’ll try and think of something new. No, I think that’s gone and done.
“I know we did one at Silverstone last week, but I think we were a bit upset after the race there, so we needed some cheering up. Maybe we’ll do one in the plane on the way back. We can probably pay the cleaning fee now.
“But no, I’ll leave that to Danny Ric and that can be his legacy. I’ll create my own.”