Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Horner had deja vu of Ricciardo victory

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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admits it felt like deja vu when Daniel Ricciardo was pushing for victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Ricciardo was chasing down Sebastian Vettel's leading Ferrari and Nico Rosberg's Mercedes after a late pit stop for soft tyres on Sunday, mirroring the same situation of 12 months earlier when it was Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in the respective cars. On that occasion, Ricciardo passed both for victory with a robust move on Hamilton, but this year there was contact with Rosberg which halted Ricciardo's charge.

Horner was left disappointed by the collision as he felt Ricciardo had the pace for victory, but praised Red Bull's strategy to get in to such a position.

"It felt a little bit of a deja vu at one point from last year and we strategically made the call at the first stop to put the hard tyre on," Horner said. "We felt that our only option would be in the latter part of race if there was a safety car and sure enough we had that new set of tyres left.

"The safety car came out and it teed it up beautifully. The surprising thing for us was that Rosberg went onto the hard tyre, Lewis had to take the hard tyre, Kimi had an issue.

"So Daniel made his way past Kimi fairly easily and managed to find his way past Lewis. There was a bit of contact between the two of them – quite a big contact – which damaged the car quite significantly.

"Despite that he was able to close in on the leading pair and he was always going to have a go and obviously got a run up the inside and got in a bit too deep and Nico came across his bows on the exit. It looked like a racing incident. It’s a shame, without that if he had have managed to pass Nico, it would have set up an interesting finish with Seb."

REPORT: Vettel wins chaotic Hungarian Grand Prix from Kvyat

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.