Daniel Ricciardo radio message draws attention after miserable Hungarian Grand Prix

Daniel Ricciardo slammed an early pit call from VCARB as a “frustrating” move that ruined the driver’s race at the Hungarian Grand Prix, leaving the Australian to finish 12th, outside of the points.

After the race, Ricciardo made it clear to media that he felt he had been put on the wrong strategy by VCARB , and that he could have finished the Hungarian GP inside the points, just like his teammate Yuki Tsunoda.

Daniel Ricciardo: “I’m really trying to bite my tongue…”

A chaotic Hungarian GP saw plenty of focus paid to Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, and their dramatic radio calls with their engineers — but that meant many viewers missed a heated post-race radio call from Daniel Ricciardo.

“I’m really trying to bite my tongue, but. You must know how I feel about the first stop,” Ricciardo said as he pulled into parc fermé.

“OK, understood,” his race engineer Pierre Hamelin replied.

“If you feel the same, please…”

“We need to review everything,” was the final call from the VCARB team.

Let’s rewind the clocks to recall exactly what happened. Ricciardo started the race on a medium-compound tire and then, shockingly, was called into the pits for a replacement on Lap 8. The call left Ricciardo fighting an uphill battle through traffic as the tires withered beneath him.

Understandably, Ricciardo had a lot to say about the call after the race.

“Why they pitted me when they did at the beginning was, we followed the soft [tire-shod] cars in,” Ricciardo told assembled media.

“They’ve just come in, we have a clear track, and we decided to pit behind them and put ourselves in a DRS train, on the same tire — we’re all on a hard.

“That was… I’ve had a lot of races, and I’ve had a lot of frustrating ones, but that’s up there.

“We had the pace, and we basically gave Yuki the race that we had in front of us, and we both could have done that.

“And we didn’t.”

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Asked if he questioned the decision from the pit box, Ricciardo said he “didn’t have time.”

“It’s a late call — box, box, box — and you pit,” he explained. “But honestly as soon as I’m pulling in the pits I’m questioning it.

“But you know… you get called in Turn 13 and you have to react.

“We talk about strategies and that, but two cars jumped us at the start with a soft tire. That’s fine. Let them go. They pit and we follow them to then just be on their strategy.

“We would have had clear air and a chance to, I think, from what I understand, do Yuki’s race. So, yeah. I don’t know.”

Adding insult to injury was the fact that Ricciardo felt the team was solidly to blame for the poor call that cost them a points-paying finish, but he didn’t an apology.

“Honestly, I was expecting more,” he admitted.

“On the in-lap, I was waiting for, ‘Sorry, we fucked up,’ and I didn’t get it. So that made me even more angry.”

Ricciardo reiterated several times to the media that he didn’t understand why VCARB had pitted so early rather than use up the medium tires. He also pointed out another element of the race that frustrated him: Being asked to continue fighting, despite his older tire.s

“Like, Stroll’s catching me a second a lap and maybe more, and they’re saying, you know, it’s really important to keep him behind,” Riccardo said.

“What do you want me to do? You’ve pitted me so early, I’m on older tires.

“It’s like, so I’m also being expected to fight when we’re not really in a fight anymore, so that was also frustrating.

“There were times where it just felt like the bed was made.”

While a 12th-place finish isn’t the end of the world, it’s certainly a frustrating result for a team and a driver fighting hard to secure every single possible point. With 11 points, Ricciardo sits in 13th position in the Drivers’ Championship, one spot behind Tsunoda. However, VCARB’s sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship is quickly being threatened by Haas.

Trying to find a positive about his race, Ricciardo mused, “I don’t know if by doing that that allowed Yuki to score points, but from my understanding, we both could have done it. We were both quick enough, we had the pace all weekend.

“Unless I’m missing something, and I really don’t think I am.

“I guess I’ll hear all about it in the next hour.”

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