Daniel Ricciardo says his chance of a podium result at the French Grand Prix was wrecked by front wing damage sustained shortly before his sole pit stop.
Ricciardo moved up to fourth on a chaotic opening lap and quickly dispatched Carlos Sainz Jr. to hold a comfortable third, a few seconds behind team-mate Max Verstappen.
Ricciardo came out of the pits still poised for a podium – having passed out-of-sequence Sebastian Vettel – but was reeled in by Ferrari rival Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen comfortably overhauled Ricciardo along the Mistral Straight to grab the final podium position with six laps remaining, and the Australian rued damage to his RB14.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “We had pretty good pace towards the end of that first stint. It seemed that we were catching Max and pulling away from Kimi.
“When I pitted, the boys said the front left part of the wing was damaged. They think it happened about two laps before the pit stop because I started to all of a sudden get quite a lot of understeer.
“I don’t know if it was a failure or we hit some debris. That broke.
“So then already with the Soft tyres we were struggling when we left the pits. And then a few laps later the team said the right part [of the front wing] broke.
“So both parts identically seemed to break. Whether there was a failure or debris I don’t know yet.
“But it happened and we were slow. Obviously because of that we had a lot less downforce and understeering.
“So Kimi was always going to catch us with that pace, but the blue flags – that was really bad. But we were a wounded car from just before the first pit stop.”
Ricciardo nonetheless moved up to third in the Drivers’ Championship, but is now 49 points behind title leader Lewis Hamilton.
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