Daniel Ricciardo says he’s taken away a sense of personal pride after his performances in the last three races which saw the Aussie deliver two top-ten finishes to his RB team.
Ricciardo rounded off his Austrian Grand Prix weekend with P9 at the checkered flag, a result that made up for the disappointment of missing out on a spot in Q3 the day before by just 0.010s.
The Aussie’s productive Sunday at the Red Bull Ring was also the third race in succession in which he outperformed his RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
“I don’t remember all the race,” he said, quoted by Motorsport Week. “I need to probably watch it again to rate how happy I am, but I’m definitely more happy than sad.
“Obviously Haas outscored us, but we weren’t quick enough. I think also the Alpine was quicker, so to hang on… I think the team helped.
“We had the two Hard tyres, we could pit a little bit earlier and capitalise on track position.
“So they pitted me at the right time and then I just had to watch the mirrors and try not to f*** up, basically.”
Ricciardo reckons he was able to make the most of the cards he was dealt in the last three races in Canada, Spain and Austria. The 35-year-old F1 veteran now aspires to keep his momentum going.
“I feel like that’s three weeks in a row now where I’ve got most out of it,” he added.
“Still searching for a bit more perfection but yeah, three on the bounce.
“At least I can I say I swiped out of the paddock three weekends in a row now on a Sunday, feeling proud. Just got to keep that up.”
Ricciardo is the only one of Red Bull's four current drivers without a contract for 2025, and it’s a well-known fact that he is under pressure to save his seat for 2025.
On multiple occasions, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko has alluded to Red Bull reserve Liam Lawson potentially stepping back into a race seat next season with RB.
But Ricciardo hopes that by F1’s summer break at the end of this month, a string of consistently good performances will have appeased Marko and avoided his replacement.
“I’ve known obviously Helmut such a long time, and at the end of the day he doesn’t care about personality,” he argued.
“What he goes about is the stopwatch and the classification. He’s a racer, and that’s all he really wants to see from us.
“That can make him not think great about me to all of a sudden think great about me. I think this weekend’s helped.
“As I said, it’s a little bit more consistent now, so just keep it going and hopefully by the summer break he’s laying on a beach somewhere saying ‘Ricciardo, he’s still got it’.”
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