Daniel Ricciardo was hit with a time penalty at the Canadian Grand Prix after the F1 stewards found he had made a jump start at the beginning of the Montreal race
RB have told Daniel Ricciardo that he was not at fault for jump-starting the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Australian was penalised with a five-second time penalty because the stewards found that his car had moved “before the start signal was given”. He served that punishment at his first pit stop and still finished the race in the points.
Having looked into what happened, the team came to the conclusion that their driver was not to blame. Ricciardo was told over the radio by race engineer Pierre Hamelin: “The penalty was nothing to do with you, Daniel. No mistake on your side. It was an issue with the car.”
Team principal Laurent Mekies later confirmed that “clutch dragging” was the reason why the car moved too early, and Ricciardo was initially baffled by the penalty he was given. He said: “I got a penalty for a jump start, but I was a bit confused because I knew that I didn’t jump the lights.
“But then I remembered that during the start I felt that maybe the car was moving. We had a bit of an issue with the car, and we’ll have a look at it, but obviously, this was a back step for our race.”
Regardless, Ricciardo went on to record his best Grand Prix finish of the season to date. And he admitted that he had felt like he had a point to prove after he was criticised by Sky Sports F1 pundit Jacques Villeneuve earlier in the weekend, who had questioned: “Why’s he still in F1?”
Ricciardo had responded to that after qualifying fifth by telling the 1997 F1 champion to “eat s**t”. And after the race itself he added: “It’s a good one because it’s the first weekend I’ve gone well from start to finish. It’s nice just to be competitive from Friday through to Sunday.
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“And a race like this, it’s so hard, mentally everything is draining so you can’t expect to do a perfect race when it’s like this. But I feel like in all these conditions we managed to still pull out a result with a few challenges along the way. So yeah, I’m happy. Just got to keep it rolling.
“And I think that little energy, probably a little bit of a chip on my shoulder I brought into the weekend, I’ve got to make sure that that stays there and just kind of keep that level of intensity. Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s a little bit angry or just getting my testosterone up, but I think it helps me.”
Asked if he thinks it could be a turning point in his season, Ricciardo replied: “There is certainly some hope that it is. Obviously, I’ve got to repeat it and back it up to show that or prove it. But yeah, definitely I’m happy with some things that I’ve acknowledged since Monaco and I really do feel that it’s no coincidence that this weekend went a bit smoother.”