Daniel Ricciardo: “A difficult mistake to digest”

It could have been, it had to be, the weekend of Red Bull need Daniel Ricciardo. And yet the most famous smile in the paddock did not shine on the podium this time. He himself, who even in the worst situations always manages to find the positive side, a Monaco had to pocket a truly bitter second place, behind the Mercedes di Lewis Hamilton.
Starting from pole in the pouring rain and behind the safety car, Ricciardo he practically had the victory in his grasp, also thanks to the fact that he had kept a set of supersoft tires for the race, which the team promptly took out when the rain stopped tormenting the Monegasque Sunday, but late compared to the driver's stop Australian and after having made him do a – useless – lap on the intermediates. A crucial pit stop thus turned into an endless wait, with the mechanics without rear tires while the single-seater was already hoisted onto the stand.
The return behind Hamilton and the subsequent mistakes on the track, certainly also dictated by galloping pressure and nervousness, thus definitively ruined the dreams of closing the Monegasque weekend with the icing on the cake.

“Two races in a row, two races in a row!”, he wanted to underline Ricciardo as soon as the press conference began, referring to the previous Spanish round, where on that occasion too it was one pit stop - too many - that meant he missed out on the top step of the podium. “That's all I can say. We were fast in the wet, we were comfortably in the lead, we stopped to put on the intermediates, and we found ourselves stuck behind Lewis, suddenly stuck in a race where there was no need to get involved. So I was called to switch to slicks and the tires weren't ready. I didn't call. I didn't call late! I'm extremely disappointed, really. I don't want to stand here and look bad, because I had a podium in F1, but two times in a row is hard to swallow,” concluded the bitter Australian.