Ricciardo says his mistake was “a Seb spin”

2020 70th Anniversary Grand Prix

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Daniel Ricciardo said his ‘Seb Spin’ while racing Carlos Sainz Jnr finished off his chances in a what had already been a disappointing race.

The Renault driver joked about the incident with Sebastian Vettel after the race.

“I caught Seb in the media pen and I feel like this is, unfortunately for him, the last few years it’s a bit of a ‘Seb spin’ when you’re the inside car and soon as you get on throttle you just you lose it.

“He did it with me in Austin in 2018. It’s one I don’t think I’ve experienced yet.”

Ricciardo was on the inside of Sainz at Village when his Renault got away from him.

“I could see Carlos and you’re trying to obviously squeeze a little bit but not have contact. And then as soon as I opened the wheel and got on throttle, it just went around.

“I think when you’re such in close vicinity to another car on that side angle, you lose a chunk of downforce that’s normally coming in from that side and I guess keeping the car down. So I think it’s just a very quick loss of downforce and it can obviously catch you out.”

Having gone into the race with high hopes after qualifying fifth, Ricciardo was already having a tough race when he spun.

“it was a little bit of salt in the wounds,” he said. “By that point, we were already on the back foot. I don’t want to say it was over, but then with that, it was.

“I just wanted to just roll over a little bit and just put my head down. Not a fun afternoon in the end.”

Vettel also spun, at turn one on the first lap of the race, coincidentally also while running side-by-side with Sainz.

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35 comments on “Ricciardo says his mistake was “a Seb spin””

    1. savage. now seriously, daniel might have solved the conundrum, the engine mapping mustn’t expect this scenario hence the spins.

  1. Ricciardo must have forgot that he ran off from RBR because Max was starting to dominate him.

    1. GtisBetter (@)
      9th August 2020, 18:59

      Not really. Not sure why people keep saying this, it’s a lie.

      1. He left a team capable of 3-4 race wins per year for one that hasn’t been capable of competing for a race win in over a decade.

        He was scared of Max.

        1. Watching to much Netflix F1 series and want to sound clever online? LOL

        2. So did Hamilton to Mercedes. He was looking for a new challenge and wanted to be the #1 driver which was clear was never going to be the case at RB.

          1. No-one goes to Renault for a new challenge it’s because they’re out of better options.

            It’s not Schumacher leaving Benetton as the current double world champion to take the most famous manufacturer in motorsports to greatness once again.

            Ricciardo was the second best driver at RBR and knew it.

            Hamilton went to Mercedes they were predicted to have the best engine in the hybrid era.

        3. No f1 drivers scared by another driver,if they have that kind of mentality they’re not f1 drivers, they cornering at 300kph for a living and try to beat everyone on track,ricciardo leaves because he see red bull leaning more towards max,baku crash in 2018 it’s the catalyst of ricciardo decision

      2. Ric is a great driver, but in qualy pace and race pace Max was clearly better. Yet by far not to the levels he has on Gasly or Albon. How good Max is is NSFW.

        1. Hardly, RIC was beating Max until he announced he was joining Renault. He probably felt RB were starting to favour their younger driver, just as they did with Seb over Webber. Young drivers sell more drinks it seems.

          1. Seen the problems Red Bull has with their Second driver i don’t think they favoured Max at all. Red Bull wanted Daniel for 1 reason to do good in the constructors you need 2 good drivers and they had that.

            Daniel personal feeling was to go to a other team. For a lot of reasons only Daniel knows.

      3. Bobson Dugnutt
        9th August 2020, 23:55

        because they’ve seen an f1 themed soap opera on Netflix

    2. I can think of at least (supposedly) 20 million other reasons each year why he joined Renault!! 🤪

    3. And this relates to the good humored article how?

    4. Lets be honest, would of been great to see Ric and Max keep going as team mates with a RBR car that’s able to fight Mercs on its day. Albon not cutting the mustard unfortunately, so who’s going to replace him?

    5. Lol.. Man you sound bitter about the term ‘Seb spin”

    6. TrickyMario7654
      10th August 2020, 5:55

      When the team clearly states “they’re building the team around the other driver”, why on earth would you stay?

      The only thing Ricciardo was running from was a toxic environment.

      1. Totally agree. 5 years from now, Max will be like Seb, but without the championships. Spinning on his own…oh wait, he did that Already in Hungary. Dan was better off leaving red bull from the moment they shafted him in Spain 2016.

  2. Pedro Andrade
    9th August 2020, 18:54

    This is heartbreaking, please retire Seb…

    1. And walk away from all those millions? Nah, he`ll come in last but he still gets paid, they`re not giving him the same spec car as Charles.

  3. yikes, this is getting ugly for Seb, from a 4 time WDC and solid championship contender to slowly becoming the laughing stock of the paddock… Even though I was never a fan, it kinda hurts to see him so low.

    1. I agree, it’s not the way you’d want to bow out from the most historic team in F1. Lets hope he gets something positive from the remaining races.

    2. @gechichan yeah I agree. Have never been a fan, but am not enjoying this fall from Grace at all.

  4. I hope I will find a video of this Ricciardo prank. Sadly somehow I missed Ricciardo’s spin, probably it was during an advertisement block, or I was looking somewhere else.
    There was a short period during the race where Kimi and Seb were in the last two positions. Quite hard moments, I think they will remember that for a long while and have a good laugh at it when they retired, or atleast I would do so if I were them :D

    1. The “live” camera missed it until a small plume of dust appeared in the background as Daniel rejoined the track, then there was a gap before the replay. I noticed the incident primarily because Daniel lost a bunch of positions on the timing board.

  5. RocketTankski
    9th August 2020, 21:11

    If Ferrari could secure Sainz early then Alonso could fill in at McLaren for the rest of the season. Vettel could start gardening. Happy faces all round?

    1. If Sainz made that move, wouldn’t it make more sense for Ricciardo to go across to McLaren and Alonso to join Renault, rather than each of them have half a season in each other’s car?

  6. As soon as I saw Ricciardo spin, I told my mate that he just ‘pulled a seb’. Glad to see Daniel agrees

  7. The strategy for RIC was garbage and led to this. He should have been mixing it with the tracing point but was instead put in traffic on the clearly inferior medium tyre at the first stop. Based on other car’s pace the point of the race the best strategy for RIC would have been stop 1=hard stop 2=hard or try for the one stop, which based on last week was a real possibility. Real strategy bungle here though obviously RIC shouldn’t have spun it.

    Interesting observation / insight as to cause of some of Seb’s spins. Also seems to have been some extra variability with tyre performance this week.

    1. He only had one set of hards for the race, so he had to run multiple stints on the yellow tire. Or he should have pitted only once, like Ocon.

      1. @f1infigures Seriously? I wasn’t keeping up with the tyre use pre-race, but that seems like some awful management by the team.

        1. @hiperr Everyone was given 2 sets of hard tires (the default tire allocation), so I guess they used one of them in practice to do a race simulation. Apparently, they weren’t too impressed by its performance, as Ricciardo ran two stints on the mediums before he switched to hards, which suggests they thought the medium tire was the stronger tire in the race.

    2. I’m not sure, but I think @deconsume is unaware of the 2 compound rule.

      1. No, cancel that, a 2 stopper using hards threw me.

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