McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo says he believed he had escaped making contact with another driver at Turn 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Ricciardo was caught up in an incident involving Charles Leclerc and Lance Stroll, and although he was able to continue, his car suffered significant damage.
Team-mate Lando Norris was forced to retire after he was involved in a separate incident at the same corner.
Ricciardo states that he was on course to move into second place before being collected in the crash and spun around.
“For a moment I thought I got through the chaos in Turn 1,” Ricciardo said. “The start itself was good, I think I got two or three off the line.
“Then I saw Valtteri [Bottas] go into Lando who went into Max [Verstappen] at the start. I was able to get through that in second and I honestly felt like I got through it.
“Just as I went to exit the corner on power I saw Charles come into me and he spun me around. The way he came into me I thought someone had gone into him, because we were kind of through the corner and it seemed weird.
“He damaged his car, damaged mine, I spun, and that was that. I saw the replay and Stroll went into him and then he went into me, the team tried to tape up as much as they could, but it was very compromised on the right-hand side.
“We don’t have the fastest car so with some compromises it obviously hurts. With a tricky track to pass it was hard to do anything.
“It started to get away from us at the end. A lot of our races were compromised today, I’m not the only one, but it is frustrating because for maybe half a second I was thinking we got out of this in P2. It is what it is.”
Ricciardo went on to finish the race in 11th, after being pushed out of the points by former team-mate Verstappen towards the end of the race.
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