Why Ricciardo's injury recovery took longer than expected

The broken bone in Daniel Ricciardo's hand was worse than first feared, hence a longer than expected lay-off for the AlphaTauri driver.

During Free Practice 2 at Zandvoort, Ricciardo crashed while avoiding Oscar Piastri's spun McLaren at Turn 3, and broke the metacarpal in his left-hand.

It required surgery and promoted Liam Lawson to a temporary race seat as Ricciardo aimed to return to full fitness with hoped for returns in Singapore and then Qatar dashed.

While the surgery was a complete success, the Australian revealed how he suffered a set-back.

Ricciardo's injury set-back

"I would say [the recovery] was tougher than I thought, but I'm probably a bit of a wuss as well," Ricciardo explained to media including RacingNews365.

"When the accident happened, and we were aware of what bone broke, they seemed fairly okay with it in terms of "Oh, it's a relatively easy one to kind of fix.'

"But when we got the surgery done in Spain, further checks were done and the break was a lot worse than it first seemed.

"That is what took a lot longer for my recovery and probably made it a bit more painful for me."