Wouter wrote: ↑22 Jul 2024, 18:19
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Everyone is talking about how this strategy ruined Ricciardo's race. Everyone drove a two stopper! Yuki rode a one stopper, but had to take it easy with his tires. He finished 34 seconds behind Russell and Alonso and Stroll rode in his trunk. Who says that Ricciardo had passed Alonso and Stroll and if he had succeeded... he would have taken one point. Can you call this ruining a race?
By the way, Yuki drove an excellent race. When he got out he was in a lot of pain and walked away very carefully and slow from the car. His physio gave him a lot of galaxies before and after the race. He had a sore back and a bruised coccyx.
Yuki did a great job, absolutely no question about it. Honestly, I was end more impressed when I found out from folk here that he pulled off a 1 stop strategy! A Very very, impressive drive!
But Daniel is right, both cars should have scored points!
Understandably, Ricciardo had a lot to say about the call after the race.
“Why they pitted me when they did at the beginning was, we followed the soft [tire-shod] cars in,” Ricciardo told assembled media.
“They’ve just come in, we have a clear track, and we decided to pit behind them and put ourselves in a DRS train, on the same tire — we’re all on a hard.
“That was… I’ve had a lot of races, and I’ve had a lot of frustrating ones, but that’s up there.
“We had the pace, and we basically gave Yuki the race that we had in front of us, and we both could have done that.
“And we didn’t.”
https://apple.news/AnIgNFWAHSBWq7W11YHDNgQ
Asked if he questioned the decision from the pit box, Ricciardo said he “didn’t have time.”
“It’s a late call — box, box, box — and you pit,” he explained. “But honestly as soon as I’m pulling in the pits I’m questioning it.
“But you know… you get called in Turn 13 and you have to react.
“We talk about strategies and that, but two cars jumped us at the start with a soft tire. That’s fine. Let them go. They pit and we follow them to then just be on their strategy.
“We would have had clear air and a chance to, I think, from what I understand, do Yuki’s race. So, yeah. I don’t know.”
Adding insult to injury was the fact that Ricciardo felt the team was solidly to blame for the poor call that cost them a points-paying finish, but he didn’t an apology.
“Honestly, I was expecting more,” he admitted.
“On the in-lap, I was waiting for, ‘Sorry, we --- up,’ and I didn’t get it. So that made me even more angry.”
Ricciardo reiterated several times to the media that he didn’t understand why VCARB had pitted so early rather than use up the medium tires. He also pointed out another element of the race that frustrated him: Being asked to continue fighting, despite his older tire.
“Like, Stroll’s catching me a second a lap and maybe more, and they’re saying, you know, it’s really important to keep him behind,” Riccardo said.
“What do you want me to do? You’ve pitted me so early, I’m on older tires.
“It’s like, so I’m also being expected to fight when we’re not really in a fight anymore, so that was also frustrating.
“There were times where it just felt like the bed was made.”