Red Bull must concede defeat to Ferrari

Daniel Ricciardo started sixth at the Temple of Speed in Monza. His start went quite well, with the Australian driver not losing any positions and even temporarily battling with a struggling Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) after a nightmare start. The Red Bull driver had to settle for fighting from a distance with Bottas once the latter was overtaken by Hamilton.

He decided to stop on the sixteenth lap to leave his worn-out super softs and put on soft tires. His last stint was rather calm, allowing him to stay in contact with Bottas. I was really close to Bottas in the middle of the race, and I knew I had to drive hard for this position.

Once the final stop of his aggressive strategy was made to finish the race on the super soft compound, he launched into a frenzied race to take fifth place from the Finnish driver of the Grove team. The Australian eventually managed it at the cost of a late braking and a legendary overtaking maneuver, which he is known for. “I was really excited after the maneuver, I was really far behind,” he reacted. But the Red Bull driver does not fail to highlight the cooperation of the Finn during the overtaking. “I could see that he had seen in the rearview mirror that I was there, Valtteri is not known for being a dirty driver and I knew he wasn’t going to turn in on me. It was fun!”

The race is a satisfaction for Riccardo who believes that the objective is fulfilled. Realistically, we knew that Ferrari would come here with an advantage over us. We knew that Williams, Force India would be strong. Fifth was our goal and, obviously, I achieved it. I missed that yesterday. So I was obviously very determined to get it today.

Max Verstappen started seventh on the grid behind his teammate. His start went badly, which forced the Dutchman to attack hard and overtake many drivers with his super soft tires. “I had the anti-stall system at the start. I don’t know what happened, I need to analyze that.” He adds: “After that, it’s just really difficult because you have to push harder on the tires to pass the other drivers without compromising our strategy, but at the end of our last stint, it was very positive.”

Once his first stop was completed and he set off again, the young driver started attacking at maximum to move up the field. The team implemented a strategy allowing Verstappen to be fast but also to climb as high as possible. His duel with Perez (Force India) during his last stint didn’t go unnoticed, as the Mexican driver chose to go off-track and let the Dutchman pass. I think we did our best with the tires we had. We can be very happy with that. The car behaved very well today, even though this track is not our favorite.

This race was less positive than the previous ones for the Red Bull team against their Italian rival, but both drivers limited the damage in the championship by maintaining an eleven-point lead in the constructors’ championship for second place.