Daniel Ricciardo said he knew the moment he made his first pit stop in the Hungarian Grand Prix it was a tactical error.
The RB driver started ninth but finished three places further back after running just seven laps on his medium compound tyres at the start of the race. He spent the rest of the race on the hard compound.Ricciardo admitted he had misgivings about the call to pit when it came on lap seven. “You don’t want to pull in the pits,” he told the official F1 channel.
“You get the call and you know this isn’t the thing to do. But you get the call late and there’s no time. There’s no time to question it because then if you miss a lap, it’s even worse.”
He said the team should have left him out to use more of the life from his tyres. “As soon as I pulled in, the cars on softs had pulled in, we’re on a medium: Let’s go.
“Let’s use our clear and use the pace we’ve got. And then we come out in traffic and it’s just DRS train and for what? We’re all then on the same tyre.”
He described his afternoon as “one of the worst I’ve had in 250-something races. That was a long, old frustrating race where I just had a lot of lot of anger.”
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Ricciardo’s team mate Yuki Tsunoda started one place behind him but ran until lap 29 on his medium tyres and completed his race with a single pit stop. In contrast Ricciardo “felt like we’d taken ourself out of the race so early.”
“We’re expected to fight a car that’s coming a second a lap quicker on newer tyres. What do you what do you want me to do?
“We just made it so difficult for ourselves when we had pace and we could have just stayed out, clear air, stay calm and do what we’ve done all weekend. So we did a race today but we didn’t do a race if you know what I mean. We were just driving around.”
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2024 Hungarian Grand Prix
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Chris (@austin-healey)
22nd July 2024, 7:23
They shouldn’t let Yuki’s mum decide DR3’s race strategy. 😀
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
22nd July 2024, 9:00
With field spread as it is (especially at Hungaroring, but plenty of other places). We kind of tell ourselves that ‘gap to leader’ isn’t the most important bit of info and to ‘fight the race you’re in’ and it doesn’t matter that Albon has lost half a minute to Piastri in the opening 5 laps.
But that race at the front blends into the race in the middle which blends into the back, with each making decisions that affect the others. Now that all the cars are close enough on outright pace (3 tenths in qualifying can be the difference of 8-10 places, 20 years ago it might have been 2-3 places) 18th does have to care about what’s happening in the battle for 4th.
I think plenty thought that when the drivers in that very slow moving log jam started to box with Daniel it was very early, and a high price to pay for clean air, especially when that clean air is gone with the amount of cars boxing together.
Checo was in that pack of frustratingly slow moving cars and ultimately finished 7th, one place behind Sainz who was well ahead of it and going at his own pace. I get why RB wanted to pull him out of the train, you can think of it as ‘losing a pit stop every ten laps’, but obviously this time Yuki got the better call. Being in the train is painful to watch, but when a group of drivers box early, everyone of them is freeing up / gifting space for those who decide to stick.
Red Pill (@redpill)
22nd July 2024, 17:46
@bernasaurus
Agreed, all three groups in the race all have different strategies, what’s being done in the leading group is completely different to what the back marker group is doing even though they all have the same tires to choose from. However Russell and Perez made it through to the front pack
Jip
22nd July 2024, 10:04
They must have debriefed this before the race. Something like: “Some cars might be starting on softs and pit insanely early. We’re starting on mediums, so we will not box before lap 15.” As track position is so important, it is tempting to cover these early stops, but as so many drivers did it, no-one really got the benefit of clean air. So they just crippled their strategies for nothing. RB did get the strategy right with Tsunoda, however. The 1-stop strategy was the way to beat these early-stoppers, as their second stop pretty much coincided with Tsunoda’s only stop.
Nick T.
22nd July 2024, 11:37
I was cringing for all the drivers who stopped really early. That’s almost never a good strategy at Hungary when most of the cars are running at a similar pace let alone when 5 cars come in with you at the same time. It’s why when they were giving him gaps Alonso whined on the radio “I don’t want to hear it. We already lost the race on the first stop.”
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
22nd July 2024, 11:51
Very weird strategies for half the grid. I’m surprised only Yuki followed that strategy too!
Nick T.
22nd July 2024, 12:04
Especially at Hungary of all places.
An Sionnach
22nd July 2024, 12:52
Very silly. He does well in qualifying and the team throws that away immediately.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
22nd July 2024, 13:15
I was really surprised when cars started to come in as early as lap 7. Especially in a 70 lap race on this circuit. All very odd and even more frustrating for Daniel bearing in mind he was on the tyre with better life.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
22nd July 2024, 13:51
Haas has pretty much P7 locked this season but could be legitimately vying for P6. If I were Haas, I would open up the purse strings for upgrades. These mistakes by RB can be very costly and Haas should be opportunistic.
montreal95 (@montreal95)
22nd July 2024, 17:13
It doesn’t really matter. DR showed Yuki beating pace all weekend. On a weekend when both YT and SP crashed needlessly and expensively and given RBR’s inherent and obvious distrust in Yuki’s ability not to break down psychologically under Verstappen’s pummeling onslaught were he to become his team mate, Ricciardo’s Hungary form made their decision on who’ll replace Checo after the summer break much easier. My bet it’ll be DR with Lawson in the RB and then they’ll re-evaluate at season’s end. If Ricciardo swims, he’ll get resigned for 2025. If he sinks it’ll be Lawson,and Hadjar will partner Yuki in the RB.