12/07/2019
NEWS STORY
On fine form at Thursday's FIA press conference, at one point causing Lando Norris to collapse in laughter, the McLaren youngster having to remove his headset microphone as tears rolled down his cheeks, Daniel Ricciardo insists he has no regrets about leaving Red Bull for Renault.
While victory in Austria saw Max Verstappen move up to third in the championship, another difficult afternoon for Renault saw Ricciardo and teammate Nico Hulkenberg struggle home in 12th and 13th.
Indeed, it's been a difficult start to the season for the popular Australian, who has only scored points in three races, his best result coming in Canada.
Asked if he had any regrets about the decision to leave Red Bull, a move which sent shockwaves through the paddock last year, and kick-started the driver market, Ricciardo was adamant.
"Honestly no regrets," he said. "It was actually... part of me was pretty happy for them, and for F1 to just have a good race," he said of Verstappen's win in Spielberg, the first victory for a non-Mercedes driver this year.
"If I look back, by that time last year, Red Bull had three wins," he continued, "that was the first. Obviously I'm further back at the moment, absolutely, you're right but I expected this and really, if I stayed at Red Bull it was to win a title and sure, they got the win last weekend but they're still a fair way from the title. And that's not having a dig, that's just the reality.
"So I don't think I would necessarily have achieved anything else than I was already achieving there, so for that, yeah, no regrets.
"Obviously trying to build something here with Renault and absolutely there's still a lot of work to do - but equally it's pretty fulfilling when you do get a little bit of a result and Montreal was one of those moments where, it kind of... even that result alone made the first seven or so races worth it. The little bit of struggle and ups and downs.
"So yeah, but for the sport, honestly, I'm very happy that the last race went the way it did and hopefully there's more like that. Hopefully I'm not running in 12th, or wherever I was, because that's also not fun - but hopefully the battle at the front gets close and says close."
Asked about Renault's struggles in Austria, he admitted: "It wasn't a fun one for us really.
"We obviously got pretty deep into it after and tried to figure out why we were off the pace all weekend," he continued. "Definitely feel we learned some things with set-up and I think we kind of just started in a direction which we kept pursuing from Friday, thinking it was the right way to go, but I think in hindsight it wasn't.
"It's probably more just a set-up misdirection we went for as opposed to anything crazy we found on the car. I was hoping to find a cracked chassis or something like that! I think the car does have a little bit of a sweet spot and I think we had worked towards that the last few weekends, getting those Q3s and building that confidence within myself and that momentum, but we kind of shifted a little bit away from that in Austria, for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time from a set-up point of view and all that. I think we kind of moved away from something we'd got to know but we'll try to bring it back this weekend for Silverstone and go back to what we know."
Check out our Friday gallery from Silverstone, here.