Ricciardo offers a home podium to Red Bull

The final laps of the Austrian Grand Prix were very intense for Daniel Ricciardo, who had to work hard not to crack under the pressure imposed by Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes.

The Australian, at the cost of an attacking race, secures a new podium for his team, the fifth in a row: “I love fighting and Lewis came out of nowhere in the last laps. It seemed like the gap was stable, then, in a few laps, he caught up with me very quickly. I then had two laps to go and had to defend, which made for a pretty exciting race,” the ecstatic Australian declared.

Red Bull and Ricciardo surely did not expect to be so fast this afternoon: « Having good speed here in dry conditions was a pleasant surprise for us. I had Seb [Vettel] in front of me for most of the race, and I know his long stints on Friday were much faster than ours, so we really didn’t expect to have a race pace similar to him or Mercedes today. »

Back on the podium, the Australian savors this moment where he shared his famous “shoey” with Martin Brundle: « Holding Lewis back, fighting, and managing to stay ahead was really cool. Another podium, it’s really awesome! » confided Riccardo, who yelled out loud cries of satisfaction on his radio once the checkered flag had passed.

A joy that was difficult to see on the face of Max Verstappen, forced once again to retire without being able to do anything about it. A bad start and a collision at the first corner ended his race: « We had a clutch problem at the start of the race. I could feel during the formation lap that it wasn’t great, then, at the start, it got stuck, which triggered the anti-stall as I tried to take off. I was far behind after losing many positions and tried to stay out of trouble at the first corner, but I was hit on the rear tire. »