Daniel Ricciardo, RB, Singapore, 2024

Ricciardo took fastest lap point off Norris “obviously with Red Bull in mind”

Formula 1

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Daniel Ricciardo said he expects a Christmas present for helping Max Verstappen in his championship fight in the Singapore Grand Prix.

The RB driver pitted to take a new set of soft tyres at the end of the race. That allowed him to set the fastest lap on the final tour, his 1’34.486 beating the previous best set by Lando Norris, a 1’34.925.

As Ricciardo was running 18th, setting the fastest lap made no different to his championship position. However it took one point away from Norris in his effort to catch Verstappen.

Although Ricciardo drives for RB and Verstappen for Red Bull, both teams share the same owner. Ricciardo’s radio messages indicated he did not ask to pit to make an attempt for the fastest lap.

Ricciardo is widely expected to lose his place at RB after this weekend. He admitted that was in his mind after setting the fastest lap.

“Part of me is – I don’t mean this against Lando – but part of me is hoping Max wins by one point, because I think I guaranteed myself a really nice Christmas present if so,” he told Sky.

“It’s just, I think obviously, yeah, it’s with a little bit of Red Bull in mind. But maybe just to have one last crack at doing a fast one, if it is to be it.”

Afterwards Red Bull team principal Christian Horner expressed his gratitude to Ricciardo for helping Verstappen.

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“Daniel, we know his capabilities,” Horner told the official F1 channel. “We know exactly what he’s done.

“He showed, again, with that final lap that he did that which obviously was valuable to us because obviously it takes the point off Lando.”

RB team principal Laurent Mekies claimed they arranged Ricciardo’s fastest lap bid because he may not drive for them again after this weekend. “Given this may have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to savour it and go out with the fastest lap,” he said.

Selected Ricciardo radio messages from the end of the Singapore Grand Prix

Ricciardo’s discussion with his race engineer Pierre Hamelin over the final laps, as broadcast:

Hamelin Yuki 36.5
Ricciardo Is he in clear air?
Hamelin Confirmed
Hamelin Okay Daniel anything we can help you with to catch Russell’s DRS?
Ricciardo Er no. Nothing really. Balance isn’t too bad just losing overall.
Hamelin And Leclerc is 1.4. I’ll keep you posted.
Hamelin Okay Daniel head down push on.
Hamelin Daniel we are on diff exit two for fastest lap.
Hamelin Box box, box box.
Hamelin Keep pushing, keep pushing.
Hamelin Okay Daniel heads up. After turn 14 we will go
Hamelin Sainz 2.5.
Hamelin Charge on, start 12, mode one.
Hamelin Sainz 2.4. Offset one.
Hamelin Strat 12. Charge off.
Hamelin Strat two when you can.
Hamelin Mode 10, mode 10. This is last lap.
Hamelin Okay charge on, fail 84 please.
Hamelin Okay obviously we tried and nothing happened out there so it didn’t work out. But I’m glad we tried. I think that was a very well-managed stint on the medium. Very well managed. You’ve done all the right things there, and you’ve got the fastest lap.
Ricciardo Understood. Yep. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Hamelin Okay mate, thanks again for the hard work. We will stop at the bridge, P1 and full car switch off, P0 and everything else.

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Keith Collantine
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41 comments on “Ricciardo took fastest lap point off Norris “obviously with Red Bull in mind””

  1. Ricciardo’s radio messages indicated he did not ask to pit to make an attempt for the fastest lap.Ricciardo’s radio messages indicated he did not ask to pit to make an attempt for the fastest lap.

    But did he know Norris had the fastest lap? If so, he wouldn’t need to be told why he was pitting for FL.
    If Verstappen had the fastest lap, would he still have tried? And hypothetically if Verstappen had pitted to attempt the fastest lap, would a driver from the Red Bull B-team try too?
    Is there really no off-radio coordination between the 2 teams? Or are we expected to believe that?

    1. Daniel would have known by watching the screens along the track as drivers do. As for coordination between the teams it would have been made clear before the start of the race: Max is the #1 (of 4 Red Bull drivers) so everyone is working with the objective of aiding his championship.

      1. Yes, that’s what I’d concluded, he’d seen Norris had FLAP on the screens, I just wondered whether Ricciardo mentioned the fact on the radio.

  2. He actually didn’t take the fastest lap point off him nor anyone else, for that matter, but Magnussen who set an at-the-time fastest after his last pit stop before Ricciardo eventually bettered that time after his later last pit stop, so zero impact.
    People seemingly forgot who directly took it away, even Max unless he wasn’t told via team radio.

    1. @jerejj Magnussen’s time was deleted for a track limits infringement.

      1. Admittedly, I briefly forgot his lap got invalidated for track limits (I should’ve recalled), but either way, I highly doubt a single fastest lap point will impact the championship outcome, & if anything, the 7 points lost for the team order call in Hungary could more realistically have a direct impact.

  3. His goodbye was already sad enough before obeying to do the fastest lap, it made it a little bit worse, as anyone on the track could have done that, there’s no merit in doing it when the day before they were driving much faster than that.

    1. It still goes in the statistics! Schumacher still has the fastest lap record, which makes a lot of sense given his typical strategy in the refuelling era to jump opponents through pit stops, surely ricciardo hasn’t been able to do what he wanted, so why not an extra fastest lap.

  4. Interestingly enough Magnussen also set fastest lap but I think it got deleted as shortly afterwards it was given back to Norris.

    1. It was deleted for track limits at turn 2, was mentioned in the Sky F1 commentary

  5. Daniel set a new lap record.
    So if it was his last race in F1, then a lap record on his last lap is a fair response from a bloke facing the sack!

    1. Exactly, that’s more than a good reason.

  6. A career which ended with the ultimate whimper. Knew he couldn’t beat Max so went for the easy move. Came back in desperation after being humbled by Norris. Has ultimately shown nothing since and now he’s celebrating taking a poultry point from a rival for Max. Wow, what a sad end.

    1. Agreed 100%.
      Ricciardo and Perez have been on a very similar mission for quite a long time, that is not to be terrible during a GP weekend. Both have been consistently so bad that when they manage to do something not-negative every now and again, people celebrate it.

      1. now he’s celebrating taking a poultry point from a rival for Max.

        No chicken input at all :)
        Might be paltry, though…

  7. Aside from the usual list of complaints about Red Bull running a four car operation, this is really a sad way for a race winner to end his career. It’s almost humiliating.

    1. Very humiliating indeed. Verstappen basically destroyed him and with this took any remaining dignity he had.

      Essentially cleaning the shoes of the guy who destroyed your whole career just before a meeting to ensure his further promotion.

      Sad end to what could have been a solid career.

      1. @Ben Destroyed???
        Riccardo’s stats against Max as teammates show a different picture to what you claim. The facts are that Daniel had more poles, wins, points and fastest laps as teammates despite in 2018 Riccardo having many more technical problems and 4 more DNF’s!
        Of the few races Max did win, eg Spain 2016, was only possible due to pitwall errors and bad fortune for Dan with a puncture!
        Like it or not Max lost to Daniel not the other way round.

        1. The saddest thing about Ricciardo’s career is that so many people seem to have forgotten that up until the end of 2020, he was widely considered to be a top 5 driver on the grid. He comprehensively outperformed Vettel over their season together, then was competitive against Max up until the final half season together in 2018. In 2019 he took a few races to get up to speed, after which he outperformed Hulkenberg, and in 2020 he comfortably beat Ocon and I believe was rated 4th in the driver rankings on this site over the season – and probably similar on other sites.

          I won’t try to defend his record after 2020 because for whatever reason, he has not been the same driver. But people should show some respect for someone who for several years was one of the top drivers in F1, rather than focus on the disappointing final few seasons and pretend the first 2/3 of his career didn’t happen.

          1. @keithedin there is a slight correction to make, as Ricciardo was ranked in 5th, rather than 4th, in the end of season review for 2020.

            However, a lot of posters on this site were complaining that he should have been ranked above Leclerc and Sainz, underlining how high his stock used to be with the fans.

          2. Well said.

          3. Ricciardo lost to Vergne at Toto Rossi, Kvyat in 2015. It’s not like he was a top driver before 2021.

            His entire career is overhyped on 2 seasons. Vettel was struggling to adapt in 2014 – had the least track time in pre-season testing, + lots of reliability issues and wasn’t very motivated. And also lost out on winning in Canada and Hungary due to poor Redbull strategy.
            And Max only joined mid season in 2016 and had a lot of reliability issues in 2017 when he was 19-20 years old.

          4. Well in all honesty Vettel is given way more credit than he deserves. He was just a guy who lucked into 4 titles achieved from pole positions (never won a race if not starting from the front row) since his car couldn’t lose and Webber wasn’t F1 material in the first place. So beating him does not exactly qualify a person as good. Beating Max briefly, who was under 20, isn’t exactly an achievement either. So all in all this likeable chap probably has always been a very good midfield driver who had a very good car for a couple of races so he took his wins. Good for him. We all know drivers need a good car to be able to win.

  8. I find it distasteful that the second team can do blatantly help out the first team with no benefit to themselves.

    1. Sorry, typo. *So.

  9. This has been updated to add a quote from Laurent Mekies.

  10. Singapore 2022 – Russell takes fastest lap finished 14th
    Japan 2022 – Zhou takes fastest lap finishing 16th
    Bahrain 2023 – Zhou takes fastest lap finishing 16th
    Italy 2023 – Piastri takes fastest lap finishing 12th
    Miami 2024 – Piastri takes fastest lap finished 13th
    Austria 2024 – Alonso takes fastest lap finishing 18th

    Another 6 examples within last 2 years with countless others where top 10 drivers pitted at end of race simply because they could make a free pit stop to get the extra point without the extra point making any difference.

    In this case a nice goodbye for Riccardio having the fastest lap in his likely last race.

    So why is this suddenly reported as so surprising and unfair – maybe because it didn’t help a British driver beating arch enemy #1 of the British media to the world title. If McLaren wanted the fastest lap then Lando should have kept his foot down, keep the gap big enough for an extra pitstop and set FLAP on fresh tires.

    1. Good point. Alonso took the fastest lap away from Max in Austria in P18 and there was nobody who said it was unfair to Max. If Lando really excells in the last part of the season and win the WDC I will cheer for him. But this redicoulous British bias already makes me hope he will fail.

    2. @f1statsfan Because as he admitted, he did it for another team and another team’s driver.
      Personally I don’t think it will make much difference, but as a principle, it’s ridiculous that one team has another team available for its uses on track.
      Horner: ‘Daniel got fastest lap too, so it’s just a 7-point advantage.’
      Max: ‘Thanks Daniel [and bye-bye]’

      1. Yep.

        Putting empty stats here says absolutely nothing. In particular, when there was no dispute for anything in ’22 and ’23, it just happened. It’s not the same thing.

    3. maybe because it didn’t help a British driver beating arch enemy #1 of the British media to the world title.

      Yeah, but the British Commonwealth driver got a nice send-off, and the British based Red Bull team benefited, even if the British based McLaren team and British driver lost out.

      BTW. You should note that until the last lap, the British driver was holding the FL point – that’s why some people are ascribing Red Bull A support motives.

    4. Singapore 2022 – Russell got the fastest lap on lap 54 which is 5 laps before the end of the race.

      Japan 2022 – Zhou got the fastest lap on lap 20 – 8 laps before the end of the race. Entirely due to strategy of putting on new inters to gain track position.

      Bahrain 2023 – Alpine had the fastest lap and was a direct midfield competitor. So it was done for Sauber’s sake. Unlike here where it makes no difference to Toro Rosso.

      Italy 2023 – Piastri had the fastest lap in lap 43/51.

      Miami 2024 – lap 43/57

      Almost all of these were drivers getting fastest laps on their last stint, not specifically for the fastest lap.

      The only legitimate one is Austria 2024, but Aston Martin doesn’t have any links to McLaren nor did Alonso say it was to help Lando. And Aston Martin is somewhat a competitor to Redbull.

      1. Ricciardo has 18 fastest laps, surely it’s better to have more in the statistics, I don’t see why it has to be reduced to “taking a point off norris”, especially in his likely last race.

        Alonso also went for fastest laps towards the end of his career, before his comeback.

        1. Fastest lap is a meaningless statistic. At the end of the day Ricciardo finished 30s behind in last place.

          Also he outright admitted to doing it for Redbull – “expecting a Christmas present and hearing something about 3.5 million dollars”. Even if it’s a joke the FIA should actively investigate that RB aren’t used by Redbull Racing to interfere in a championship.

  11. Ricciardo taking a point off Norris to help Max is a true testament to just how useless Perez is a number 2 driver. They had to resort to a driver in the sister team to get the job done

    1. Perez is a perfect teammate to Max. Why should Max get any more help anyway?

      It’s not like Piastri helps Lando, and is way worse to his teammates championship than Perez is.

      1. In the end, the only way you can help a team mate strategically is being very close to him in performance, perez can’t do that, but I also believe “helping the team mate” is overrated, as in verstappen generally still has to be faster than other competitors on average, think of baku without the crash, it’s not like perez, having outperformed verstappen till then, could’ve done much to help verstappen gain positions.

    2. Perez was on a point that is the reason he didn’t get do the FL.

  12. Whenever I think about Red Bull and there antics over the years the only word I can use to describe the feeling is ‘Scuzzy’…

  13. I really don’t understand why people are getting so upset over this. It was not Daniel’s decision and I don’t think it reflects on him. It was his team’s decision.

    If RB did it as a favour to Max well then maybe question them about it. But it is entirely possible that they saw it as having a duel effect i. e. a nice gesture to Daniel as well in his final race.

    Possibly a bit of pro British bias again because it hampered a British driver and team? Get over it! I am British by the way and not in any shape or form a RedBull supporter.

    1. I don’t think anyone believes it to reflect on him. He’s their employee, he’s in a fragile position and likely leaving, if that would help his chances, why not?

      It does reflect on the purpose of this STR/AT/whatever team of being there though, when true racing teams are wanting in and are denied.

Comments are closed.