Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo was clearly unhappy with the Japanese Grand Prix result, where he finished in a lowly fifteenth place. Ricciardo thought Massa and Raikkonen would leave him room at the start.
The Australian tried to fit through a gap between Massa and Raikkonen on lap one, but touched wheels with the Brazilian, which caused him to get a puncture, and fall all the way down to second last – meaning his race was all but over.
“At the start, the best line for me was straight down the middle. I saw the gap between Kimi and Felipe and I knew it was close, but I thought they would make a bit of room.”
“I haven’t seen the footage and don’t want to put the blame on anyone so we’ll call it a racing incident for now.”
Ricciardo believes the team could have achieved a good result, if it wasn’t for that start incident.
“It’s a shame for the team, I think we could have gained some positions off the line and then the race would have been completely different. But we had the puncture, and that damaged the floor so we lost some downforce. I tried to do what I could, we started to catch some cars towards the end but by then I didn’t have the grip to do anything.”
However, not everything was bad from the race.
“On a positive note, even with the damaged floor, the car was handling well.”
