BUDAPEST, Hungary — Daniel Ricciardo had an impressive comeback race to Formula One and felt it could have included a fight for points were it not for an early hit from Zhou Guanyu.
Ricciardo, who started and finished 13th, was hit from behind at the opening corner by the Alfa Romeo driver.
Zhou misjudged his braking point and went into the back of Ricciardo, who then hit Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and found himself running at the back of the pack by the end of lap one.
“If we stayed ahead and held position at the start I believe we could have really fought for a points finish today,” Ricciardo said after the race.
Remarkably, Ricciardo avoided any serious damage to his car.
“I had a look at the end. There was a little bit of damage on the back of the diffuser, but the team said it was pretty much OK.
“I’d love to say I could have gone a second quicker but I think the car was more or less fine!”
His race after the contact and included a long final stint on medium tyres, which followed an early call from the Australian driver to pit out of sequence to get his AlphaTauri into some clean air.
“I was kind of just stuck behind a bit of a train behind Sargeant and someone else and I knew in dirty air, even with these new cars this circuit is definitely a hard one to follow. They pitted quite early and as soon as they did I felt the grip coming back in the tyre and thought ‘let’s see what we can do in clear air’. And that was better.
“We pitted relatively early. I think we got put back in traffic and that’s when I was like ‘whatever we can do let’s have a think to give me clear air’. Because it’s so hard to pass and we have been a little bit down on top speed so it was just trying to do an ultimate strategy.”
Ricciardo said the spell in clear air had been invaluable to his understanding of his new car, which he only drove for the first time on Friday.
“Still a lot of questions to be answered so having the pace, having the clear air and making a few mistakes, leaning from those, learning what the car likes, what it doesn’t. I learnt a lot from the race.
“Honestly just coming into it physically, not doing a race distance in eight months… Especially round here it’s actually one of the tougher ones. That’s one of the biggest smiles I have right now, it felt pretty good out there.”
Asked about how he felt physically in the race, Ricciardo said: “I actually felt a lot better than I thought,”
“I thought I’d get to mid-race, lap 30, 35, and I’d be starting to… yeah, start really feel it. I remember looking at lap 35, I think it was, and, ‘oh half way there’, feeling pretty encouraged. It was all pretty good.
“I feel like I probably didn’t have enough drink in the car so other than being a