Daniel Ricciardo admitted he suffered from “a bit of race rust” in his return to competition yesterday.
The AlphaTauri driver has returned to racing this weekend after he broke his left hand in a crash during Friday practice at the Dutch Grand Prix in August. The injury caused Ricciardo to miss five rounds over the last two months. He had only joined the season two races earlier as a replacement for Nyck de Vries.Ricciardo qualified 10th for Saturday’s sprint race but fell to 12th at the start, where he finished.
“There was definitely some pros and cons,” said Ricciardo about yesterday’s sprint race. “I think the pros were it was fun. I just really enjoyed being back on the grid and it’s probably always my favourite feeling on a race weekend is when like the lights, they slowly all turn on and then off for the start, that adrenaline spike it’s hard to get that in many other things in life. So that was really enjoyable.
“I think then some little bits, I don’t like saying it because I’m very experienced – but this year not so experienced – were a bit of race rust.”
He admitted he should have been more aggressive at the start of the race. “At turn one, part of me is like I should have stayed on the inside, bottled up a little earlier, and I kind of stayed there and then a couple of cars went on the outside.
“So [there were] little race reads which I probably missed a little bit. But then through the race, I felt like I picked up some lines and made some improvements. But certainly still some things to work on for tomorrow.”
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Ricciardo impressed in sprint qualifying as he missed out on the top 10 by just three hundredths of a second. He said he needs to make more improvements over race distances.
“The one-lap stuff felt pretty good,” Ricciardo said. “It was more race craft. I put a good move on Lance Stroll on the outside of one, but he got me into turn 12. I thought I had him covered, I didn’t.
“So there were some things where I’m like ‘ah, I should have made it harder for him’.”
Today will be Ricciardo’s first grand prix since July. He said it’s been so long since his last grand prix distance it will be as if he’s returned all over again.
“My bigger thing tomorrow is just race fitness,” said Ricciardo, who will line up 15th. “I got those two races before the [summer] break and then haven’t done anything really since.
“So it’s like Budapest all over again. For sure I expect to maybe sweat a little more than the others tomorrow, but honestly this has been better than I thought. So, no concerns for tomorrow.”
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Edvaldo
22nd October 2023, 14:33
Still enough to be better than “team leader” Yuki.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
22nd October 2023, 23:16
Yes, I thought that was an ok performance by ricciardo on saturday, for all criticism tsunoda gets he’s been the standout driver this year against 3 team mates at alpha tauri.