Daniel Ricciardo doesn’t believe there was any more he could’ve done to score points after finishing twelfth in the United States Grand Prix. The Australian recovered from a bad start and was fighting with the midfield pack throughout but he admitted the performance of the harder tyre caught him out having run on the softs for longer than most.
“I think I overtook more people in this race than in any other in my whole career! It was particularly fun at Turn 1, which became a favourite passing spot for me, especially one lap when I managed to pass two cars at once. Until today, the whole weekend had not gone that smoothly and of course, I was particularly disappointed with how qualifying went yesterday. Because of that, I was even more determined to go well today. I gave it everything I’ve got this afternoon, although it was not enough to finish in the points, but twelfth was probably the best result we could have got today. At the start, the dirty side was indeed very slippery and the two Marussias got ahead and I touched with one of them. I thought I’d damaged the front wing, but I managed to keep going as the car was okay and after that I think we got the maximum out of the car. It was very competitive on the Option, but once I switched to the Prime it seemed that tyre also worked better than expected, which meant I lost some of the advantage we had hoped to have by running a very long first stint. Deep down, I know I did my best.”
Toro Rosso teammate Jean-Eric Vergne was battling with the Mercedes drivers early on but damaged his suspension in the process, making him one of only two retirements at the Circuit of the Americas.
“I got a really good start and I had about a tenth of a second to decide whether to go to the left or the right going into the first corner. Everyone seemed to be going right, so I went left aiming for the inside of the hairpin, as I was much quicker. But it didn’t pay off, because I lost many positions and got stuck behind other cars and therefore could not warm up my tyres properly. Despite this, I was able to fight and make up some positions. Unfortunately, the suspension broke and the team told me to park the car rather than risk bringing it back. A shame, as this new circuit is fun to race on.”
