Red Bull Racing scored dominant points at Monza but won’t be writing home about it as they couldn’t reach any higher than fifth and sixth.
Daniel Ricciardo, who once again beat team mate Sebastian Vettel, couldn’t make it a hat trick of victories as the speed deficit of the Renault Power Unit was plain for all to see.
However, fifth and sixth place provided them solid points in the Constructors Championship and keep a comfortable gap between them and Williams in third place.
Ricciardo said of the race, which saw him make a number of razor edge moves: “The strategy helped today, it kept the tyres fresh enough to go those extra few laps at the end. I saw the cars in front of me pit and the pace was still good enough, so seeing that we didn’t have great pace when we were out of position then we thought we would try something different and that’s why we went long, which helped towards the end of the race. I was more comfortable with the prime tyre and was able to do some good moves, which kept me smiling.”
Strangely for Vettel, his primary complaint was the exact opposite of Ricciardo, he couldn’t manage the primes as efficiently as the Australian: “I think that was the most we could do today. On the primes we weren’t able to look after the tyres as well as we wanted to. The target is to get back to the front, at the moment the gap is quite big but we will have to work hard to close it again. We have had some difficulties this year, but they can only make us stronger if we learn from them.”
