Daniel Ricciardo described his daring overtaking moves in the latter stages of the Chinese Grand Prix akin to "licking a stamp and sending it" in his charge to win the race in Shanghai.
After a mid-race safety car due to the debris left on the track after Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley collided, Red Bull managed to make a quick decision and pitted both Ricciardo and Max Verstappen for the soft tyre to make a charge towards the end of the race.
Ricciardo took the restart from sixth place but picked off rivals one-by-one to grab the lead from Valtteri Bottas, and went on to record victory, the sixth of his Formula 1 career.
"It was hectic," said Ricciardo. "I heard ‘Safety Car’ in Turn 14 and they said ‘we’re gonna double stop 'come come in the box’ and yeah, it happened very quickly but yeah, very decisive move, winning moves also from the team so thanks a lot and yeah, fat lip and all I got the win.
"Sometimes you’ve just got to lick the stamp and send it so there we go, I enjoyed it very much.
"Obviously, we had the soft tyre so I knew I could always get a little bit more out of the braking than them so a lot of the time you get one chance to try so I made the most of the opportunity.”
When asked about the race-winning move on Bottas, he continued: "Yeah, it was close you know, I think it was hard but fair but I saw him defend so I wanted to go shallow up but then he came a bit more so I thought about pulling out, no, I’m just kidding! No, I knew there would always be enough room and then the tyres had pretty good grip so… Worst case I went wide and I would have another crack somewhere else."
After coming within 30 seconds of not being able to set a lap in the first part of Saturday's qualifying session, Ricciardo also thanked his team for their efforts in changing the failed power unit in just two hours, the quickest time the team have changed a hybrid power unit by over an hour.
"I don’t know what it is, I don’t seem to win boring races," joked the Australian.
"They’re all pretty fun so that was unexpected, you know, put ourselves 24 hours ago I thought we may be starting at the back of the grid so just firstly thanks to the boys yesterday. I thanked them after qualifying but today is the real reward for that work so thank you to everyone at Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, the mechanics worked their butts off."
Discussion about this post