Daniel Ricciardo must be a very frustrated person at the moment, following his disqualification in the opening race due to fuel-flow issues with his car he was looking to put the problems from Australia behind him, unfortunately this wouldn’t be the case as a variety of issues unfolded to end his weekend early.
Things started to go bad for the Red Bull Racing driver in qualifying when he was held up by Williams driver Valtteri Bottas (who would receive a 2 point penalty on his F1 superlicence for the incident), thankfully for the 24-year-old he managed to put his Red Bull-Renault in fifth place on the grid.
The race would start well for Ricciardo and looked as if he would be putting pressure on the drivers at the front of the race before his last pitstop. “It was looking like we could have a solid points finish today; the race was going pretty well. The start was really good and I made up a couple of positions and I was starting to, let’s say, mix it up at the front, which is nice. It’s fun being up there and fighting for the top few spots, but then we had a problem at the last pit stop and then we had a puncture.”
During the third pitstop Ricciardo was released too early before the front-left wheel had been secured. As he pulled away from his pit-box the team frantically waved him down, he would be pulled back in the pitlane to secure the wheel before being sent out on track again.
Ricciardo was then penalised with a 10 second stop-go penalty for the incident which will also have an impact on the next race as he receives a 10-place grid penalty.
“With a little bit of luck we’ll turn things around soon and I’ll get some points. I love racing up the front, it’s been a privilege so far and a lot of fun in the last couple of races. It’s a bit addictive actually, I want more, so you’ll see me up there plenty of times this year” he added.
To cap the weekend off the Australian was forced to retire from the race with seven laps to go following a technical problem.
