Daniel Ricciardo is hoping for rain tomorrow – and might even do a rain dance with Sebastian Vettel to help increase the chances – but said that a measure of his race will be whether Vettel reaches him tomorrow.
The affable Australian suggested that rain would make the race more interesting, and that holding hands with the German driver – who failed to set a time in qualifying, meaning he’ll start from last – could help bring clouds.
“I think Seb is probably going to do a rain dance tonight so I might just join him, hold hands and light some candles,” said Ricciardo.
“But honestly, some rain would be interesting for the race, so we can dance tonight, as long as we don’t dance tomorrow. If he gets near me then we haven’t had a good enough race.”
Ricciardo qualified fourth, just 0.054 seconds behind team-mate Max Verstappen. Whilst it’s always disappointing to finish behind your team-mate, Ricciardo has two reasons for the gap – firstly that he won from fourth last year, and secondly that relinquishing third was his birthday present to Verstappen.
“I would have loved to be on third today, but that half a tenth was actually Max’s birthday gift from me and I wanted to start on fourth really, because that’s actually where I started last year and I won.
“This is obviously all planned in my mind. I did a bit of a lift of the throttle just before the finish line, so yeah it’s of course all calculated.”
Commenting on his chances tomorrow, Ricciardo is hopeful that the Red Bull Racing team can achieve a good result.
“I did all I could today and I think we both got the most out of the car. We’re half a second from Lewis around here so I think we can be pretty happy with that. It gives us a chance in the race tomorrow even if it’s dry.”
