Ricciardo enjoyed being ‘the hunter’ during recovery drive to fifth

2017 British Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

After an impressive comeback drive to fifth from the back row of the grid, Daniel Ricciardo says he enjoyed being ‘the hunter’ during the British Grand Prix.

Starting 19th on the grid, Ricciardo battled his way through the field to finish in fifth place behind his team mate Max Verstappen at the chequered flag.

“It’s nice,” says Ricciardo. “Last weekend I was the hunted and today I was the hunter. It’s a very good result.”

Following the early safety car, Ricciardo found himself battling with Romain Grosjean and ended up on the grass after trying to pass the Haas driver around the outside of Luffield.

“I don’t know how much they showed it on TV, but I made a really good restart,” Ricciardo explains.

“I was going for three cars on the first lap. I went to the outside of Grosjean and just got squeezed a bit – I probably shouldn’t have been there. I felt like I came from the back twice, basically, and managed to get fifth.”

Ricciardo overtook over half of the field en route to his top five finish, eventually catching and passing Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault in the closing stages.

“I was pushing the whole race,” says Ricciardo. “Hulkenberg was quite a bit in front of me. I caught him with a couple of laps to go, so that was nice.

“I was giving it everything I had and my engineer was giving me updates of the laptimes. He was like ‘you’re going to need to keep this up if you’re going to get close by the end’. A couple of laps before I caught him, I saw he’d locked up I think two laps in a row. So I think he was obviously pushing and he was starting to suffer a bit. So once I was there, it was a little bit smoother.”

2017 British Grand Prix

Browse all 2017 British Grand Prix articles

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

4 comments on “Ricciardo enjoyed being ‘the hunter’ during recovery drive to fifth”

  1. Great drive.. but i should not have been necessary. RBR should be able to build two cars able to race . Reliability is very bad at RBR.

    1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
      16th July 2017, 19:23

      I think there have now been about 4 races that Red Bull haven’t finished due to reliability. Plus another that was even a DNS with Ricciardo in Australia. 5 races with technical issues between the 2 drivers is not good. That is effectively 25% of the season missed so far for the team because of their reliability problems alone. Verstappen had also had bad luck not relating to engine issues though.

      Then on top of that, Verstappen had problems in qualifying in China and Ricciardo had a gear box change and MGU-H issues here in Britain. It isn’t just Red Bull that seemed to have been unreliable though. Kvyat seems to have had at leased 3 retirements with technical problems. Same with Stroll. Palmer has had terrible luck too. F1 cars just are not reliable!

  2. I was sat at Club Corner today, and thoroughly enjoyed Ricciardo’s excellent drive. Right from the driver’s parade the crowd were rooting for him, and it was a super performance. Watching him reel in Hulkenberg was fascinating, from 10 secs out with 11-12 laps to go you could see he gap reducing (I could see from the entry to Stowe all the way to Abbey).

    I did feel bad for Hulk after such a strong weekend, probably the driver I most want to see getting his first podium and win.

  3. Shame Keith didnt see it as a great drive..if it had of been Button it would of been drive of the decade!!!

Comments are closed.