Daniel Ricciardo’s performance throughout qualifying at the Hungarian GP demonstrated why he’s in the mix for the highly sought after second Red Bull seat.
Qualifying in P9 was a solid outcome for the Aussie, despite him feeling that the team missed out on some opportunities to beat Aston Martin due to the rain following the red flag in Q3 caused by teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
“I think a decent outcome. I definitely feel like we would have had something for the Astons without the rain in Q3.
“I don’t know if we would have got Fernando or what, but I definitely think we would have been in the fight.”
Despite these small frustrations, and his teammates crash, Ricciardo remained positive about his and the team’s performance as RB has returned to pre-Spain form.
“It’s been a smooth weekend. It’s been good. We’ve been quick.”
With rain threatening to disrupt Q1, he managed to deliver an incredible lap at the end, jumping from P16 to finishing quickest in the session, leading him to Q2, and Q3.
Being fastest on track in the opening segment, Ricciardo spoke about how this energised the team.
“That obviously got everyone excited.”
In Q3 he was running on semi-used tyres but managed to improve his position slightly into P9 from P10 at the end, ensuring a better start for the race, noting that it’s “nice to at least start clean side tomorrow.”
Despite having a clean session, qualifying saw incidents from both Red Bull teams, with crashes from Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda’s.
Speaking about the crashes after the session, Ricciardo said he had only seen Tsunoda’s at the time of talking.
“I have not seen Checo’s yet. I saw the aftermath, but I honestly don’t even know what corner he went off on.”
He went on to share his thoughts about teammate Tsunoda’s accident, explaing their concerns in the drivers briefing about the run-off where the Japanese crashed.
“A few of us on Thursday saw that the edge (on the track) drops a lot. And we thought if you drop off a wheel there, it’s going to just skateboard and do literally what it did.
“So there’s just no margin for error on that corner.
“I’m not making an excuse for Yuki… that corner, you just have no margin. Small mistakes obviously have big consequences.”
With rumours swirling around about Ricciardo, Tsunoda, or Lawson potentially replacing Perez at Red Bull Racing, the 8-time Grand Prix winner shared more about his mindset and thoughts about a potential move of teams.
“I’ve told myself if I can do it, go fast. You’ve got two races to give it hell.”
Despite the rumours, he spoke about his desire to perform well in the next few races to secure a future in Formula One in general, rather than in any specific team.
“These two races could be two of the most important. Of my, not only season, but potentially career.
“I intentionally came into the weekend telling myself that these two races could be two of the most important.”
