Sunday: Ricciardo and Vettel limit the damage for Red Bull
Dominated by the Mercedes-powered teams, Red Bull achieves the best possible result at the Italian Grand Prix of F1. Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel, in that order, finish just behind the Williams but ahead of the McLarens.
Daniel Ricciardo (No. 3) – 5th
Thanks to a strategy that differed from his direct competitors, the Australian was able to showcase his overtaking skills for a race that ended ideally after a challenging start: « The start wasn’t ideal, it’s the longest distance to the first corner since the starting line, and it’s not a place where you want to have a bad one, but when I released the clutch, I didn’t get any traction, so we’ll have to look into that, but we kept our cool and managed to climb up the field. I think fifth place, even with a good start, was the best we could achieve. »
Sebastian Vettel (No. 1) – 6th
Once again outpaced by his teammate at the finish, the world champion believes he did his best: On hard tires, we managed to handle them as well as we wanted. The goal is to get back to the front; at the moment the gap is quite large, but we will have to work hard to close it again. In terms of strategy, we wanted to catch up with McLaren so we opted for the aggressive strategy with an early stop, but the tires started to deteriorate at the end, and all things considered, that’s all we could do today.
