Ricciardo had 'no complaints' over top five finish

It was a long race day in Jeddah for Daniel Ricciardo, but one that ended to the satisfaction of the McLaren driver who renewed with a top ten finish for the first time since Austin.

On Saturday, Ricciardo felt he had missed out on a good qualifying performance, and the Aussie vowed to move up the order on Sunday.

And the Honey Badger was on a charge from the outset, moving up to fifth after ten laps and by the start of the first caution period. Ricciardo then swiftly negotiated the two post-red flag restarts to push up to fourth.

The McLaren driver held his own just outside the top-three for over twenty laps but succumbed to a pressing Valtteri Bottas with ten laps to go.

"I’m happy with the top five, for sure," said a tired Ricciardo. "It was just a long day!

"I think already the race start is late and then having red flags as well, it’s a very long day so I’m ready for some sleep. But I’m happy, I’ll go to bed happy tonight.

"The red flags in a way were good because the starts were good so I was able to always move forward pretty much, in two out of three starts.

"But I started on the first start with the hard and I think that was the tyre, so once it was a red flag it was a little too used to go again and we were forced to do the rest of the race with the medium and it wasn’t as fast as the hard."

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Ricciardo reckoned he could have given Ocon a run for his money had he been running on the hard compound tyre. But overall, the Aussie was satisfied with his round of racing in Jeddah.

"Potentially I could have challenged Esteban, at least a little more with the hard," he concluded.

"But in any case, happy to get a top five and definitely it’s nice moving forward, so no complaints."

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