5
Daniel Ricciardo says that the Spanish Grand Prix was a tricky race, as he came home in fifth place for Red Bull. The Australian said that the tyres were particularly hard to deal with, and it was difficult to stay consistent throughout the 66 laps.
"It was just a bit tricky to drive. It was fast when you were able to put it all together but easy to make mistakes. It was a bit on a knife-edge. If you got lucky, you could put in a blistering lap but probably 1 out of 5 I could make it happen and the other four laps I was sliding and struggling to stay on."
Ricciardo was running in sixth place for the first number of laps, before he moved up into fifth after Kimi Raikkonen retired. The Australian couldn't make gains on his teammate Max Verstappen, who ended up finishing on the podium. Ricciardo also spun at the virtual safety car restart, which left him far behind Verstappen.
The 28-year-old is now looking to Monaco, the venue where he took his one and only pole position to date, back in 2016. The six-time race winner believes that the narrow streets of Monte-Carlo will be Red Bull's strongest circuit of the year.
"At the beginning of the race it felt like we were hanging on. It seemed Kimi wasn't particularly quick and Max and myself had more pace. But I came out of the pits and there were three cars fighting and that cost me a bit of time. And on the VSC restart I had a spin which put me in no-man's land. Monaco should be our strongest circuit to date on raw pace but we'll see."
Fergal Walsh
I am puzzled with Ricciardo's performance in Spain. I don't recall him have this kind of spotty performance before. He is still in my top 3 of drivers, but Max seems to regularly make him look inferior.
Reading between the lines, he didn’t have a spotty performance, he was saving his engine whilst intermittently going for the fastest lap, though he wouldn’t admit it.
Due to the difficulty in passing at Spain, there was no point thrashing his engine to try and get past Vettel for an extra two points, better in the long run to cool his jets, save his components and let Max and Seb thrash theirs.
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boudy
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The red bulls will go very fast at Monaco. Both will have a great chance of being on pole and bringing home a win.