Ricciardo logs fifth victory after 'crazy day' in Baku
Daniel Ricciardo logged the fifth win of his F1 career in Baku, and once again the Red Bull driver was the man in the right place to take advantage when things didn’t go to plan for the pace-setting teams.
The Australian dropped down the order when he had to pit after five laps to remove debris from a brake duct, which has sent the temperatures up. That dropped him as low as 17th, but then a series of safety cars and incidents played into his hands.
Some aggressive passing at restarts also helped, and after the red flag he ran in third – and inherited the lead when first Lewis Hamilton and then Sebastian Vettel had to pit.
“I think I have been pretty fortunate,” said Ricciardo. “I’ve only had a few victories, but I think pretty much all of them have come under pretty crazy circumstances, or the races have been far from dull. Obviously all of them are special.
“Today was just crazy. We haven’t been necessarily the quickest car on track or all weekend. I said it yesterday after my crash in qualifying, I said, ‘Be there and capitalize on opportunities,’ and I certainly capitalized on all the restarts where I was able to gain at least one position, if not more.
“Then we had some fortune, with Lewis, I think he had a loose headrest or something and he had to box, and then Seb has his penalty behind the safety car. It was crazy, there was so much going on, but it was fun. It was fun to be in the battle for the most part and towards the end, obviously once I got the lead it was just trying to keep the laps I could. As I said, we knew we weren’t setting probably the quickest times on track, but I knew if I kept that rhythm it was enough to win. Now it’s sunk in a bit more, I’m obviously very happy.”
Ricciardo said while the delays for Vettel and Hamilton put him in a position to win, he took nothing for granted.
“Once they had their penalties and whatever was going on, yeah, I certainly believed I could win but you never know, obviously, until it’s the end but sure, I believed the race was then in my hands, so I kind of understood more or less the lap times the guys around me were doing.
“And I knew the gap I had so I was just trying to be consistent with the times I could do, more or less, and that was that. So yeah, just trying to match those times and get it home to the finish. It was nice on the last lap, I could finally smile a little bit.”
He was upbeat about the performance of the RB13: “I think this weekend we certainly looked pretty good in the speed traps, and as I mentioned on restarts I was always moving forward. There was all different types of power units in front of me on several restarts and we were able to – if not pass them, hang with them. Obviously we had a few little updates this weekend and it seems to have helped so yeah, it’s positive, it’s positive.
“I believe that Max’s issue was maybe due to some debris after the first lap and that maybe got caught and everything overheated, so I don’t think his problem was necessarily a genuine one from that respect, and obviously we saw some good performance at least from mine in the race. Yeah, we’ll move forward and try and get stronger and stronger.”
