‘Bruised’ Ricciardo at a loss over FP2 crash

Jamie Woodhouse
Daniel Ricciardo PA

Daniel Ricciardo escapes grid penalty for Styrian GP.

Daniel Ricciardo can’t explain what caused his high-speed crash early in FP2 ahead of the Styrian Grand Prix.

At the penultimate corner of the Red Bull Ring Ricciardo carried too much speed into the fast right curve and completely lost the rear of his Renault before sliding through the gravel and into the tyre barrier.

He was talking to his team over the radio, but took a while to emerge from the wrecked R.S.20.

When he did leave the cockpit, he was seen limping quite heavily towards the medical car.

Due to the heavy impact of the crash, Ricciardo was sent to the medical centre where he was subsequently given the all-clear. However, he was still spotted walking gingerly back to the garage afterwards.

And the Aussie can’t explain what caused him to lose control.

“That first push lap was going quite well up until Turn 9,” he told Autosport.

“It was a mistake. It all happened very quickly so I’m not sure what went wrong.

“I turned in and just lost the car straight away. I know these things happen with cars and in Formula 1, so it’s not out of the ordinary. I’m OK, however, I feel bad for the guys. We’ll just move on.

“The car felt fine this morning, especially towards the end. The second session would have been interesting, so we’ll just have to find out our pace tomorrow or Sunday.”

Fortunately, Ricciardo said he suffered nothing more than some “bruising” from that heavy impact.

“I hit my knee on the steering column when I came in. So just a bit bruised,” he revealed.

“But they checked it, literally just some bruising. All is good. I am fine but the car was pretty beat up. I feel bad of course for not only my knee but for the boys and the team, but I was trying to understand what went wrong.

“It is one of those that goes so quickly, but yeah, just one of those ones.

“I turned in and just as I turned, there has been a bit of a tailwind we saw that maybe helped me a little bit, with losing the rear but nothing with the car broke so it was obviously just on me.

“Fortunately I don’t do those things too often but today I did, so sorry guys.”

Luckily for Ricciardo, Ciaron Pilbeam, Renault’s chief race engineer, confirmed that “the car will be ready to run again by tomorrow.”

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