Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo brushes off being beaten by Kvyat

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Daniel Ricciardo says he is "not going to lose sleep" over being beaten by Daniil Kvyat in the drivers' championship this season.

Kvyat entered the final race of the season with an advantage of ten points over his Red Bull team-mate after a strong run towards the end of the year. Ricciardo came close to overhauling that gap in the final race by finishing sixth while Kvyat was tenth, but in the end the Russian finished three points clear. While admitting he would have preferred to beat Kvyat, Ricciardo says it is not a major concern after the year Red Bull has had.

“Obviously it would have been a nice little end of season box to tick to get more points than Dany but in the end I’m not going to lose sleep over it," Ricciardo said. "Overall, the season wasn’t bad. Sure the results didn’t always come but looking back on it after a race you would sit with the engineer and you would analyse things and I learned a lot and I think a lot of the time it was better than it looked from the outside.

"So I’m still pretty happy, I think we entered the season … well sixth is again probably not that representative of how good our weekend was. I’m pretty pleased and I would love to go racing again next weekend but at the same time I’m sort of happy that the season is over and optimistic that next year will be better.”

And Ricciardo says he was left feeling there was the potential to steal fifth place in the race having crossed the line just one second behind Sergio Perez.

“Parts of it were fun. I would have liked more battles, it’s a circuit enjoy fighting on. I have confidence in the big braking zones here. I had a good move with Hulkenberg and then he got me back and then I re-passed him so that was fun. I was hoping to get close enough to Perez to try. On the last lap I must have been just over a second from the DRS because it didn’t activate so I just missed out on maybe a small opportunity there.

"In the end I was hoping for some more battles at the front but every time I looked at the TV it looked like it was quite spread out. I tried to fight when I could but this year wasn’t as many battles as last year so hopefully next year is better.”

REPORT: Rosberg takes third win in a row to end season

AS IT HAPPENED: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

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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.