Daniel Ricciardo sought out Nico Hulkenberg post-race amid a skirmish at the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix as the Australian didn’t want the Haas driver thinking he was a “prick”.
En route to the Ascari chicane on the opening lap, Ricciardo’s RB squeezed Hulkenberg onto the grass, nearly sending the Haas driver into a catastrophic retirement.
Hulkenberg recovered his car well but lost several positions and Ricciardo was handed a five-second time penalty as a result.
Before he faced the media, the RB driver made sure to clear the air with his Haas rival – who had his say on the unfortunate turn of events.
“I feel like we lost everything already on lap one,” Hulkenberg said.
“First chicane, I just was somehow boxed in but in the wrong spot and then lost out.
“I then got a real good strong tow off of [Ricciardo], so, you know, tried, went next to him on the outside but he swept across quite a lot and just didn’t leave quite enough room.
“So, we made contact, put me in the dirt. Anti-stall kicked in in fourth gear, so, until I had that sorted out, I lost another three, four positions.
“It must have been P16, 17 after lap one. Obviously, pretty, pretty, pretty poor and bad.”
Ricciardo was able to divulge his chat with Hulkenberg was respectable and the two were able to clear up what went wrong in their wheel-to-wheel exchange.
“I wanted to just quickly check in and see from his perspective,” Ricciardo said.
“Look, I obviously, firstly, apologised and then I asked how bad, obviously he said, yeah, you didn’t give me enough room.
“I also wanted to ask, like, did I kind of jerk or did I just like progressively move across? I like to be aggressive, but I’m not dirty. So I wanted to make sure from his point of view, was it just aggressive or was I being a bit of a prick?
“But I believe it was just, elbows too wide. So yeah, I apologised.”
From Ricciardo’s perspective, the incident occurred over a need to rid what he believes is a weakness in his F1 skillset in 2024, losing ground at the start.
As a result, the Australian, who felt he made good ground on the opening lap up to Ascari, wanted to exert some aggression to maintain his progress/
“I felt the hit, but I don’t know, was he half a car in the grass or did he just drop the outside tyre and that kind of locked him up on braking, like kind of sit him out,” Ricciardo pondered.
“So yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, obviously, I didn’t give him enough room, period.
“It was a little bit in a way frustrating because I had struggled on first laps this year, you know, big picture.
“I don’t think I’d really gain many positions at all on that one. So up until that point [Ascari], it was going okay and was, you know, I think being a bit more aggressive, which I think I’d lacked, but then yeah, maybe I was having too much fun being aggressive and I got too aggressive.”
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