Frustrating day for Red Bull in Austria
Red Bull Racing endured a very difficult Austrian Grand Prix with only Ricciardo at the finish in 8th place. Sebastian Vettel had a power unit issue early on in the race and retired later after being lapped without any chance of points.
Daniel Ricciardo, 8th: “It was frustrating today; it’s never nice going backwards on the first lap. Off the line, it was actually one of our better starts this year, although I think Kevin (Magnussen) on the inside got a better one. I tried to hang around on the outside, which was the wrong thing to do, because you basically lose too much on the exit. So I then got swamped on the long straight. We already struggle on the long straights as it is, but even more when you get a poor exit. So I was frustrated with myself and I will have to look if maybe I could have cut to the inside and done anything better. From that point on we tried to push and catch the others, but we just didn't have that much pace. It wasn't until the last bit that we were able to overtake the Force India. The last lap move put a little smile on my face, but other than that it wasn’t a great race for us – we’ve got a bit of work to do."
Sebastian Vettel, DNF: “We stopped because we wanted to save some mileage. We were hoping for a safety car but it wasn’t coming. Obviously, it has been a bad first half of the season with a few retirements and other problems, but I guess it's part of the game. Equally we were able to learn a lot today and it’s good that Daniel got some points for us. It would be bad to say I got used to it, but obviously we have had a lot of problems so far already and I got calmer when the problem occurred. Our pace looked alright and we were able to go quite far on the soft tyre, but we were a lap down so in the end we decided to save some mileage.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal: “It was a tough day on track – unfortunately Sebastian lost power right from the first lap with an engine electrical issue, which we are yet to understand what caused it. Daniel, after getting a bit wide after Turn 1, was never able to really recover. Our lack of straight line speed seemed to really hurt us today and despite a great move on the last lap round the outside of Turn 5 by Daniel, P8 was probably the maximum today. It’s been a fantastic event for the fans of Formula One this weekend. There’s been a huge crowd and it’s great for Formula One to be back in Austria. Congratulations to Mr Mateschitz and everyone in Red Bull for putting on such a wonderful event and showing how a Formula One event can and should be promoted.”
Thierry Salvi, Renault: “Sebastian suffered an issue with the electronics at the beginning of the race where he was not able to accelerate for 30 seconds. The reasons why are still under investigation as everything came back to life shortly afterwards. This failure cost him a lot. Daniel had a difficult start and worked hard throughout the race to come back into the points. There's a lot of work to do before Silverstone.”
