Daniel Ricciardo has put his lack of pace during the first stint of the Russian Grand Prix down to hitting some debris left on the track which damaged his front wing.
After starting at the back of the grid due to taking power unit penalties, the Australian had to battle his way through the field with Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen to get to the fifth and sixth places the team had targeted.
While attempting to pass two cars en route to Turn 14, Ricciardo moved out of their slipstream to find an errant piece of debris in the middle of the road and had no chance to avoid it.
The collision with the debris had damaged Ricciardo's front wing and caused him to suffer understeer through his first stint; this meant he was unable to make the same progress through the field as Verstappen.
"The first lap was a bit of a mess and there are a few little things I will look back on and try to do better," said Ricciardo.
"Two cars were fighting at Turn 8 and as I went to pass them I was on the marbles, then off-track, which lost me positions.
"I then tried to take the slipstream of what I think was the McLaren but when I pulled out of the tow I hit some debris damaging my front wing. From then on, we had a bit of a limp and my race was pretty lonely.
"I think as a team, fifth and sixth was probably the best we could achieve from the back of the grid but obviously I would like to have been closer to fifth than seventh.
"Although we had better pace than expected this weekend I think we still made the right decision to take the penalties and on paper Suzuka, Austin and Mexico look better for us.
"I may have forgotten what champagne tastes like and I definitely want more before the season is out, so I will do what I can in Suzuka to get that."
Discussion about this post