Ricciardo was final on the highway at Austin, crossing the road seventeenth earlier than gaining two locations after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have been disqualified for working with overly worn flooring.
It marked his first occasion again since August, the Australian having endured a five-round spell on the sidelines whereas he recovered from breaking a metacarpal in his left hand throughout a free apply crash at Zandvoort.
Ricciardo reckoned it was his health quite than hand – which felt OK out of the blocks in FP1 – that was weakest, that means he had “no excuse” for a “fairly depressing” race made up principally of “misfortune”.
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He mentioned: “I truly felt most likely worse [after the Saturday sprint race]… so perhaps that was only a good little good heat up for me. There’s positives.
“The hand is not any excuse. I feel that was good. We did nicely with the timing of the return to don’t have any hesitations or excuses.
“Bodily, it is undoubtedly a more durable race. I nonetheless felt OK, we have been simply restricted with injury.”
Ricciardo’s ultimate stint was considerably hampered by working over particles that broken his brake duct to end in a lack of aerodynamic load and steadiness. That left him to recommend retiring the automotive altogether.
Photograph by: Crimson Bull Content material Pool
Daniel Ricciardo, AlphaTauri
The eight-time GP winner was additionally pissed off by the timing of the primary pitstop, which introduced him out in site visitors.
He continued: “Sadly, we picked up some injury. I informed the crew that, ‘I am sorry, guys, I acquired nothing proper now. I actually cannot do something’. That made our race a reasonably depressing one.
“At finest, we’re a top-10 automotive and whenever you put injury into it, we’re actually out of the factors. Positively most of our day in the present day was misfortune, as an example.”
Ricciardo added that Austin kicking off a quick-fire triple-header with visits to Mexico and Brazil was the very best factor for his health as a result of he might preserve “smashing it out”.
Assessing his Texan weekend, Ricciardo continued: “At occasions, we lacked communication however I feel particularly as soon as I acquired the injury, nothing actually felt that constructive to provide again as a result of we’re working with a suboptimal automotive.
“For certain, there’s issues which I take confidence from: some race health, the hand, just a few issues, which even simply getting behind the wheel in FP1 like lap one, I felt like I used to be capable of push and lean on it.
“There is definitely some internal confidence in that. However I’d say in race situations, subsequent week I am going to do higher.”