F1 | Mexico GP | Ricciardo assures he is "enjoying the feeling" of México's P7 after spending time in a team where he sometimes "felt like a passenger"
The Australian spoke on his Sunday's race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez where he recovered from a 10-second time penalty after an incident with Yuki Tsunoda to score a final P7 on the Mexican GP.
The McLaren driver, who has confirmed he will not be on the grid next year, summed up his race at the Mexican Grand Prix for the media, a race in which he was declared "Driver of the Day" for overcoming a 10-second penalty following an incident with Yuki Tsunoda.
"To go on the attack during the race and to feel like I could attack with this car was just really nice. In the last two rounds, I was pretty nervous, because George (Russell) came closer and closer, which would give me blue flags. I knew I would lose a few seconds and that would put me behind Ocon on paper. I was pushing hard to keep that extra gap of two seconds, but then George went into the pit lane. He probably didn't think about that (that he helped Ricciardo with the move), but I'm going to buy him a beer." he said post-race.
"When I saw Lando (Norris) and the other guys going into the pit lane, I didn't really tend to follow their lead, because it would then move me to their race, while I was just driving behind them. So Tom (Stallard, Ricciardo's race engineer) kept asking how long I could continue on those tyres. I said, 'Even though my pace doesn't make it look like I'm the fastest on the track, I feel like we can postpone a pit stop.' Vettel was still on the soft tyre at the time and that went well, so that gave me some confidence that that tyre would work well. It was certainly a good strategy."
Ricciardo concluded by expressing the good feeling of getting a great result like his P7 finish in Mexico at what is the end of his time with McLaren, where, he says, he often felt like "a passenger".
“It's just… it's, there's been a lot of times where I've felt a little bit like a passenger in a way. Like, I just feel like I've worked with such little grip that no amount of talent is going to get the job done, if you know what I mean. So that's where it's just I felt a little bit helpless at times.
“So you feel like you can't show really anything that you've got. Because you're just not operating on the level of the others. Today to kind of be able to lay in the emotion, it makes me happy. I wish it could have been like this more often, but I just said I'll take today. Enjoy it. Happy we got a week off so I can enjoy it a week.”
