Daniel Ricciardo felt like he maximised the result after finishing in the points at the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix in his 250th Formula 1 Grand Prix start.
Ricciardo has been in great form of late, beating teammate Yuki Tsunoda in the last three races. The Australian is finally starting to find some consistency for Visa Cash App RB after a difficult start to the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.
Starting in eleventh, Ricciardo climbed up to ninth, scoring two points for his team. The result is very impressive, considering the pace of the RB team in comparison to BWT Alpine F1 Team, as Ricciardo managed to stay ahead of defend Pierre Gasly for almost the entirety of the final stint, while he put himself within striking distance of Kevin Magnussen on the last few laps too.
An upgrade package at the Spanish Grand Prix has seen RB go backwards, with the team unable to understand the issues with the update, and Ricciardo acknowledged that he was battling really hard to hold on to the final few point scoring positions.
Speaking to F1TV, he said: “We were a bit more on the defence, a bit more mirror watching. We were hanging on to the points, but at the end on the last few laps I had DRS on Magnussen so we had a little bit of pace, probably at the end when the tyres were getting older but for most of the stint, I felt like we weren’t a very fast car in our group so we were just hanging on by the skin of our teeth.
“The strategy – the team did well. We used our two hards to our advantage, pitting early and securing the position over the Alpine’s and that was important. At the end it took some clean laps, Gasly was quite quick on the medium.
“Haas outscored us today, but we got some points, a bit of damage limitation so it’s been a better weekend.”
Rumours once again began to circulate around online about Ricciardo being replaced by Liam Lawson after comments from Dr. Helmut Marko, although it has been confirmed that no changes will be made in the foreseeable future. In the last few races, the Australian has managed to find some consistency, maximising the car he’s been given in the last three race weekends.
Ricciardo continued: “I look back now at the last three, they’ve definitely been better and leaving the Sunday feeling like we’ve got pretty much the most out of it. There always going to be areas which I can do better and improve but as a whole we swipe out of the paddock with a smile and feel like we’ve ticked most boxes so that’s good – we’ve got to keep that up.”
Ricciardo also felt as if RB overachieved by scoring points and said: “It’s a nice feeling to fight and drive a clean race, bring a couple of points home when deep down we’ll look back at our pace and say we probably didn’t belong in the points. I feel in some parts we overachieved, so we’ll give ourselves a pat on the back.”
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