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Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo produced a composed performance to claim eighth place at the 2024 Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix.
Daniel Ricciardo
Considering all conditions, it was a good weekend from the start, and with a crazy race like that, I’m happy to finish it with some points in the bag. I got a penalty for a jump start, but I was a bit confused because I knew that I didn’t jump the lights, but then I remembered that during the start, I felt that maybe the car was moving. We had a bit of an issue with the car, and we’ll have a look at it, but obviously, this was a backstep for our race. When we pitted for the Inters, we lost a few positions to the cars that stayed out and weren’t really able to get much more out of the new tyres. We jumped out of the point-scoring positions, and the race was kind of getting away from us, but as the track dried towards the end and we were on mediums, I was able to pick my way through a few cars back into the top 10 which was a little bit of a relief. I’m happy it was a fairly smooth weekend for us, and obviously for increasing the gap to the midfield behind us.
Yuki Tsunoda
Today was my mistake, a stupid move, and I’m sorry to the team. They made the right strategy decision and did a good job; it wasn’t easy on the old Inters but I was feeling okay. Also, the call when to change to dry tyres was good. At least I turned it around from Free Practice to qualifying, and that’s good, but today’s disappointing and not the way I should’ve finished the race. It was just about bringing it home.
Laurent Mekies – Team Principal
The 2024 Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix is always one of the toughest events of the year, even without the added pitfalls thrown up by the rain and so to score a few points here is an achievement, even if, based on our grid positions and where we were on track until just a few laps from the end, we could have hoped for more. The penalty for Daniel at the start, due to some very slight clutch dragging, and a couple of moments on track for Yuki cost us a few points, but there are a lot of positives from this weekend: The drivers and the team are really working well together as a solid unit at the track, while back in the factory the efforts of our staff have been equally rewarding and indeed rewarded with both cars in Q3 yet again and points today. Daniel spoke about the fact that Saturday was the tenth anniversary to the exact day of his very first F1 win, which came at this track, and it seems that he likes the place, as seen by his spectacular fifth place in quali and P8 in the race! Also on Saturday, we announced that Yuki is staying with us for another year. It is well-deserved, and it is also very good for him and us to know so early in the season that this matter is not something we have to think about anymore. Yuki also made a great recovery this weekend after a complicated Friday and would have deserved some good points, too. We need to continue with our approach of small steps, one after the other, in every single area. It is moving us race after race towards better positions, and everyone in Faenza and in Bicester is pushing extremely hard to bring some more performance to our car.
