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Performance better than beating Verstappen - Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo says he takes more satisfaction from maximising his own personal performance rather than beating Max Verstappen in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Since moving to Red Bull ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix, Verstappen has outscored Ricciardo by eight points, including Sunday's race at the Hungaroring. Verstappen finished second in both Austria and Silverstone while Ricciardo was not on the podium, but the Australian says the biggest plus of his third place in Budapest is the way he performed rather than beating fifth-placed Verstappen.

"I think for quite a few races, I think the qualifying generally has still been really strong," Ricciardo said when asked about beating Verstappen. "The Saturdays, I’ve put them together well but the Sundays, whether it was circumstances, bad luck or just not being quick enough, haven’t really felt like I’d get the most out of a Sunday.

"With Barcelona and Monaco which was so close and then it just felt like... I wouldn’t say, it looked like momentum, sort of swings a bit, but just the way racing goes.

"It was just nice to... I feel from Friday onwards until the last lap, I got the most out of it, so I’m more pleased with that this weekend, to leave Sunday feeling happy again and knowing that I got everything I could out of the car and package and it’s nice to be rewarded with champagne and a very nice trophy here."

Having had to hold off Sebastian Vettel to secure third place late on, Ricciardo says he had to do a long final stint in an attempt to put pressure on Mercedes.

"At the time we looked quite competitive to Mercedes. I think I was closing on them a few tenths a lap and basically we thought perhaps they were struggling, so we thought we’d try and just be aggressive and try and get closer to them, basically, if they were going to pit very soon.

"And also, I think Seb wasn’t too far behind but I think it was more trying to fight for the win at that time, as opposed to defending what was happening behind us. That was pretty much that, but then once we pitted, it looked like they just turned up the volume, unfortunately."

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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.