Ricciardo: A remarkable performance at the Mexican Grand Prix, praised by Horner

After a triumphant qualifying session, where he placed 4th on the starting grid, the challenge remained for Daniel Ricciardo to convert his effort. Behind the wheel of his AlphaTauri, the Australian fought to avoid dropping in the rankings and finished 7th, just a few hundredths of a second behind Russell. This 7th place earns him 6 points and represents not only his best performance of the year, but also the best for AlphaTauri, which consequently moves from 10th to 8th place, on par with Alfa Romeo but ahead due to a better race result.

Daniel Ricciardo did not fail to react on his performances, both in qualifying and in the race. There are a lot of emotions, and I feel really “better than good”. Thus, the AlphaTauri driver has found his sensations again, and he doesn’t hide his happiness regarding the start of the race, especially. After two starts on this circuit, we hold our breath because the distance to turn 1 is long and anything can happen. During the first start, we entered turn 1 in fourth position and also came out in fourth position, which made me happy.

However, it was after Magnussen’s crash that the situation worsened for Ricciardo. « For the second start, I knew that the red flag would harm our race, but I am relieved to hear that Kevin (Magnussen) was not injured after the big accident he had. Restarting on the hard tire while the others chose the medium tire, and only losing one position, was almost the best-case scenario, and we managed it well. We tried to find our rhythm, I had a little fight with Norris, but I let him go. We thought that if he could catch up with George (Russell), he would bring him closer to us, and that’s what he did. On the last lap, we got closer, but we couldn’t overtake him ».

A fight until the very end for Ricciardo against Russell, which pushed the British driver to his limits. Of course, one more lap and he would have done it (says Russell) when asked if Ricciardo could have overtaken the Mercedes driver, before adding, He had a very good weekend, I’m really happy to see him perform well, he deserves it.

A feeling shared by Ricciardo. « Anyway, fighting with a Mercedes at the end is awesome. Overall, it was a good weekend where we scored six important points. Now, let’s keep up the momentum », testifies Ricciardo, who seems to have enjoyed his fierce battle with Russell.

A surge of pride?

Daniel Ricciardo replaced Nyck de Vries during the season as he was not adapting well to AlphaTauri. Right away, he was competitive with Yuki Tsunoda, and the Australian driver was even starting to gain the upper hand when he got injured at Zandvoort. He was then replaced by Liam Lawson, who delivered impressive performances. Ricciardo is now expected to make a strong comeback.

After a difficult comeback weekend in Austin last week, he didn’t try to hide behind lame excuses and showed a great performance this weekend. This is enough to reassure his fans and please Red Bull.

Christian Horner congratulated his former driver: “« He is back to himself, he is relaxed, he is confident. […] He arrived at the weekend fully motivated after a delicate return from injury in Austin and I think he did an excellent job this weekend », adding, « It’s great to see Daniel performing so well and it fully confirms why we brought him back to the AlphaTauri ».”

I found him remarkable this weekend, fighting against Mercedes in an AlphaTauri. And if there hadn’t been the red flag, he would have finished even closer, so it was a great performance and he definitely looked like the Daniel of old this weekend.