Ricciardo Fumes After Strategy Call Costs Him Points in Hungary

Daniel Ricciardo was left frustrated after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix, and called Visa Cash App RB after a strategy call that lost him a chance of fighting in the points.

Ricciardo has been in excellent form all weekend in Budapest, showing pace in practice before reaching Q3 and out-qualifying his teammate to start ninth on the grid. The Australian needs to do well before the summer break, with rumours about his future with RB as well a chance of potentially even returning to Oracle Red Bull Racing in place of Sergio Pérez, who had another messy weekend.

When asked after the race by F1TV what he thought of the strategy calls, Ricciardo didn’t hold back on what he made of the decisions: “You know this isn’t the thing to do but you get the call late and there’s no time to question it because if you miss a lap it’s even worse. 

“As soon as I pulled on, the cars on softs had boxed, we’re on the medium, let’s go and use the clear air we’ve got but then we come out in traffic, in a drs train and all on the same tyre.

“It was one of the worst ones I’ve had in 250 something races. It was a long old frustrating race, where I had a lot of anger.”

Yuki Tsunoda finished in the points for RB, clearly showing the car had pace but Ricciardo couldn’t use much of that pace, being stuck in a DRS train for the almost the entirety of the race. Ricciardo was also ahead of his teammate prior to the pitstop. 

He continued: “I feel like we’ve taken ourselves out of the race so early and then we’re expected to fight a car that’s a second a lap quicker on new tyres – what do you want me to do. 

“We made it so difficult for ourselves when we had pace, could’ve stayed out in clean air, stay calm and do what we’ve done all weekend. We did a race today, but we didn’t do a race if you know what I mean, we were just driving around.”