RB driver Daniel Ricciardo believes that his fourth-place result in Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix Sprint provided a “statement” despite sustaining a subsequent Q1 exit.
Ricciardo had endured a challenging term to date but rebounded at the start of this weekend as he converted fourth place on the grid in the truncated race encounter.
While he was unable to maintain the place he had poached from Red Bull’s Sergio Perez at the start, the Australian held Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari behind to bag five points.
Amid rumours that he could be replaced, Ricciardo was ecstatic to place down a marker this weekend and issue what he perceives as a strong response to his critics.
“Yeah, it was, I mean, it’s so nice to fight at the front of course but then to be just holding for what we know are faster cars, it feels like a statement,” Ricciardo stated.
“It’s nice, it’s nice to still have that dog in me, it’s cool. Lots of people like to talk s**t so it’s nice to couple of middle fingers up.”
He added: “First few races everything kind of could have gone wrong did go wrong so we had a little bit of a sniff yesterday let’s say and I feel like we capitalised on that.
“So this morning as well, the start was good, everything was going well, and I just felt like it was time to capitalise, and yeah, make some noise.”
Ricciardo remained upbeat despite slumping to elimination from the first segment in qualifying for the grand prix, with his grid drop from China dropping him to last.
“Here we are four hours later starting last for tomorrow! Honestly, the weekend has still been good, this afternoon we’ll look into it,” he continued.
“It’ll dictate the rest of our weekend but I don’t think it’s a reflection of our weekend, it’s still been really positive,
“Would love to be out there in Q3 with Yuki but we’ll try and understand it for tomorrow.”
Ricciardo hinted that he was powerless to prevent his premature exit as he cited experiencing a similar situation to Lando Norris earlier in the weekend with tyre grip.
“I am [disappointed],” he admitted. “I feel like it was one of those ones where I don’t think we could have done anything in terms of I didn’t have the grip starting the lap.
I generally felt like Lando how he felt yesterday in SQ3. I don’t know what he said afterwards, but I saw his lap and he went pretty much a second slower on that Soft.
“You could see him sliding already from the exit of Turn 1 and it was a mess, and that’s honestly how I felt.
“It didn’t feel like that second set of tyres give me typically what it should with a new Soft, so I felt like we were a little bit kind of handicapped.
“Obviously we don’t have an answer why, I’m not sure if Lando had an answer yesterday, but I felt his pain.
“That’s frustrating, but it’s not like we changed the car and changed something different and were like, ‘We shouldn’t have done that.’ The first set was fine.
“There was, as always, some time to find and I felt like it was definitely quite easy to find on that second set even with a new set of tyres and track and a bit less fuel.
“The lap time’s there in the car, I simply just don’t really know what happened with that second set of tyres. I
“It’s kind of a [bad] thing to say because there are no facts behind it, but you feel it when it doesn’t give you what you want, so that’s where the frustration lies.”
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