Daniel Ricciardo earned an excellent third place for Red Bull almost by stealth at Silverstone as he surprised rivals with his strategy.
Like teammate Sebastian Vettel, on the grid before the restart Ricciardo switched from the medium tires to hard, as is allowed by the rules.
But while Vettel subsequently made two stops for fresh mediums on the way to the flag, Ricciardo was able to stop only once, which allowed him to hang on to his position in the closing stages.
“We chose to restart on the prime,” he said. “It didn’t seem like the best thing to do at first because we were really slow at the restart. Valtteri and Fernando got past me pretty easily and pulled away and I was coming on the radio basically saying 'let’s see if we can try something a little bit different' as we didn’t really have the pace as we hoped, as we expected today. Once we came in for the option, we just ran and pushed pretty much for the whole stint.
“I didn’t intend on doing a one-stop when I started on that tire but laps ticked off and we were still able to keep the pace. The team said 'do you think you could do another 15-20 laps' and I was like 'at the moment, yeah, I think we can,' so we stayed out and just held on at the end. It was awesome.”
Ricciardo, who qualified only eighth after mistakenly not going out for a final run on the drying track, said it was worth taking a risk.
“The mindset was like it always is ... when you’re out of position, just go for it, try and do something a bit different. Not much to lose. I knew we were a better car than eighth on the grid, so I was a bit surprised during the first stint, even though we were on a different tire, I was surprised not to be as quick. We didn’t have much pace, so then it was ‘let’s try something different and make something work.’ I was very hungry today. I like to think I always am but today I was pretty jacked up.”
