Daniel Ricciardo does not oppose to the stewards’ decision to penalize him for causing a collision with Lance Stroll in Hungary.
Ricciardo and Stroll tangled up on lap 48 of 70 of the Hungarian GP. The McLaren driver locked up his Hard tires at turn 2 and hit his opponent. As a result, the stewards gave the Australian a five-second time penalty.
Ricciardo revealed that he expected it would be difficult to hold off Stroll who was on Soft tires.
“To be honest, as soon as I heard he was on a Soft out of the pits, I was like, ‘oh no, this is going to be tough’. And I saw his traction out of [turn] 1, and I honestly didn’t even want to kind of go into [turn] 2 with him because I knew that he would just cruise around the outside,” he said.
“I’d even kind of braked early because I knew if I went in hard, I was going to do exactly what I did. I felt like I gave him margin and it still wasn’t enough.
“As soon as I turned, I felt it lock and I knew exactly what was going to happen. So obviously, no issue with the penalty there, that was completely fair.”
Ricciardo added that they discussed the incident after the race: “He knew straightaway he goes ‘yeah, I know, the Hard was a mess’ and had a bit of a laugh. But obviously, it doesn’t change what happened.”
