Ricciardo in lucky escape on F1 return

Daniel Riccardo avoided a "discouraging" return to Formula 1 in the Hungarian Grand Prix by committing to an alternative strategy to make up for lost time in a first-corner collision.

Riccardo qualified and finished 13th as he made his return to the grid in place of Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri but was forced to recover from a nightmare first lap.

The Australian dropped to the rear of the field after being hit by the slow-starting Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu and was lucky to escape damage when skittling into Alpine's Esteban Ocon, who subsequently took himself and teammate Pierre Gasly out of the race.

Fearing he would become stuck in a DRS train, Ricciardo gambled on getting clean air by stopping only 11 laps into his second stint, which enabled him to have a solid return.

"We got a hit from behind into Turn 1, so that put me at the tail of the field and I was just stuck behind a bit of a [DRS] train," Ricciardo told media including RacingNews365.

"Even with these new cars, this circuit is definitely a hard one to follow out, but as soon as they pitted quite early, and as soon as they did, I felt like I had grip coming back into the tyre.

"So I thought: 'Okay, let's see what we can do in clear air' and that was better. We pitted [for the second time] relatively early, and got put back into traffic, and that's when I was like: 'Whatever we can do, just give me clear air because it is so hard to follow.'

"We have been a little bit down on top speed, so this weekend it was trying to do an alternative strategy. I actually felt good with the tyres.

"That's why I was confident to take a punt on the Mediums and we went from there."

Damage for Ricciardo?

"It was really important [to be on the front foot] and I think it would have been probably a much more discouraging race [if we weren't]," added Ricciardo.

"There's maybe still a lot of questions to be answered, so just having the pace, the clear air and by making a few mistakes, learning what the car likes, what it doesn't, I think I learned a lot from the race.

"I had a look at the car at the end of the race and there just was a little bit of damage on the back of the diffuser, but the team said it was pretty much ok.

"So I'd love to say I could have gone a second quicker, but I think the car was more or less fine."