Daniel Ricciardo has revealed that he and Lance Stroll were able to laugh off their collision in the Hungarian Grand Prix, for which Ricciardo received a five-second time penalty. Stroll had just pitted for Soft tyres and was looking to pass Ricciardo, who was still running the Hard compound. As such, Ricciardo admits that he knew it would be challenging to keep the Aston Martin behind him, and the battle between the two resulted in them colliding at Turn 2. "To be honest, as soon as I heard he was on a Soft out of the pits, I was like, ‘Oh no, this is going to be tough'," Ricciardo told media, including RacingNews365.com . "I saw his traction out of [Turn] 1, and I honestly didn't even want to kind of go into [Turn] 2 with him because I knew that he would just cruise around the outside. "I'd even kind of braked early because I knew if I went in hard, I was going to do exactly what I did. I felt like I gave him margin and it still wasn't enough. "As soon as I turned, I felt it lock and I knew exactly what was going to happen."
Ricciardo accepts "fair" penalty for Stroll incident
Ricciardo was handed a five-second time penalty for causing the collision, as well as receiving two penalty points on his licence. The McLaren driver is accepting of the punishment. "Obviously [I have] no issue with the penalty there, that was completely fair," Ricciardo added. There was also no bad blood between Ricciardo and Stroll about what happened, with the two sharing a discussion about it after the race. "I saw him straight away, and he knew straight away. He goes, 'Yeah, I know, the Hard [tyre] was a mess', and [we] had a bit of a laugh," Ricciardo explained. "But obviously it doesn't change what happened." Ricciardo admits that the Hard compound "never really worked", adding: "You might get a bit of temp in it and then we obviously had blue flags and you lose it, and so just simply, I never got it going. "The Medium was okay at times, but just tricky, and the Soft at the beginning was nowhere."
Double Alpine overtake added excitement for Ricciardo
The penalty resulted in Ricciardo finishing the race down in 15th, after starting from ninth on the grid. Despite his struggles during the Grand Prix, the Australian enjoyed a battle with the Alpine duo of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon, during which he was able to overtake both in one move. "It was some of the only chatter I had today, because unfortunately we were going backwards most of the time," Ricciardo reflected. "It got me gee'd up for a little bit, because I could kind of see it transpiring. I knew Alonso was struggling a bit on the Hard [tyre], I saw Ocon come out and I was like, 'They might battle a bit here and I might be able to collect one of them'. "But then I saw them drift, drift, drift and I thought, 'Maybe I can get both', and I did. Two for one's not common, so I thought I would get a little bit of screen time."
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