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Ricciardo certain 'no other agenda' behind Verstappen win

Daniel Ricciardo is confident there was "no other agenda" behind Red Bull's strategy decisions which saw Max Verstappen win the Spanish Grand Prix.

With Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton crashing out on the opening lap in Barcelona, Ricciardo was leading throughout the first part of the race but dropped to fourth after his third and final pit stop. With Verstappen going on to win on a two-stop strategy compared to the three-stop of Ricciardo, the Australian is happy Red Bull did not hurt his chances of victory.

Asked if he felt tricked by the strategy, Ricciardo replied: "No.

"Sure I was disappointed, and it was … it obviously sucked, the outcome, to have a win and then not even a podium from a potential victory. I spoke a lot with the team and had a lot of explanations, the reasons why we pitted, and basically at the time it seemed like the three-stop was the best thing to do.

"At the time they thought Seb [Vettel] was our biggest challenger for the victory, so with me they tried to cover him. They thought that the three-stop was going to be the best, so they basically put the race against Seb and tried to stay in front.

"What also hurt on top of that was Seb going really short in that second last stint, so it meant not only did he undercut me, but then his tyres were not actually that fresh towards the end of the race, so he could not make much of a difference to Max and Kimi.

"So it was a combination of them thinking a three-stop would have worked, but also they didn’t believe that the two-stop would have worked as well as it did. So it didn’t fall in my favor, but that obviously sucked. But there was no other agenda behind it."

And when asked if the fact he will get Red Bull's one version of the new Renault power unit this weekend in Monaco scuppers any concerns Verstappen may get extra help from the team, Ricciardo replied: "For you guys maybe!

"No, as I said, even though I was massively frustrated with the outcome of Barcelona, I never thought anything sucked basically. Deep down I knew it was all with the right intentions and it just didn’t work.

"The new engine thing, it was discussed, we were trying to push it for Monaco and we knew pretty early on that we might just have one, and it was pretty much the guy leading the championship would have got that. And at the time with Danny it was looking like I would have got it here anyway, and with Max… So that is pretty much that."

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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.