Daniel Ricciardo started ninth in Hungary after a decent qualifying session, but dropped to 15th overall, having been given a five-second penalty for causing a collision with Stroll .
His overtaking of the Alpine drivers came when Esteban Ocon came out of the pits and got into the fight for position with Fernando Alonso. Ricciardo was able to pass both drivers as they went wide at Turn 2 as the Frenchman kept an eye on the Asturian.
However, it was a rare positive moment and the McLaren driver admitted it had been frustrating to drop out of the top 10 as the race progressed.
“Those races are not fun, of course, when you go backwards,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com about the Hungarian GP.
“I think there was a point where I did the double overtake on the Alpines, and I said to myself, maybe we’ll have something here? But it was still early days. That was a rush. That gave me some excitement this Sunday.”
“It was the only talk on the radio that I had, because unfortunately we were going backwards most of the time. And yes, it encouraged me a bit. I could see how it was developing, I knew that Alonso was suffering a bit with the hard ones. And I saw Ocon get out of the pits”.
“And I was like, ‘Okay, maybe they’ll fight.’ And I thought I could get past one of them. But then I saw them drift and drift and drift. And I thought maybe I could get them both, and I did. Yeah, a Two-for-one is not common. So I thought we’d at least be on TV.”
Video: Ricciardo’s double overtaking of the Alpines in Hungary
The clash with Lance Stroll came when they made their second stops at the same time on lap 46. The Canadian opted for the soft tire while Ricciardo switched to hard. Stroll suffered a spin when they touched, and Ricciardo told his team that “there was no way I could stop that.”
The Australian admitted he knew straight away he was in a losing battle beforehand given the difference in tire choice.
“To be honest, as soon as I heard he was coming out of the pits on softs, I thought ‘oh no, this is going to be tough,'” he said.
“And I even saw his traction coming out of Turn 1. And honestly, I didn’t want to go into Turn 2 with him, because I knew he was going to pass me on the outside.
“And I felt like I had even braked earlier, because I knew if I came in hard, I was going to do exactly what I did. I felt like I gave him room and it still wasn’t enough. As soon as I turned, I felt like I blocked and I knew exactly what was going on. to pass. So, obviously, there was no problem with the penalty. It was completely fair.”
Ricciardo apologized to Stroll in parc fermé: “I saw him right away. He knew right away, and he said: ‘yeah, I know, the hard tire was a disaster’. And we laughed a bit.”
“But obviously that doesn’t change what happened, it just wasn’t the right tyre. Unfortunately it didn’t work. You can get some time and then with the blue flags it’s lost. So it just never kicked in.”
“The medium was fine, but it was hard at times. And the soft at the beginning was nothing.”
Finally, regarding the holidays, he left one last message: “Happy to have a break. But yes, it has not been the six months that I wanted.”
