DAN’S THE MAN
Ricciardo works his magic in China win
DANIEL Ricciardo is the master conjurer who comes from next to nowhere to win races. From sixth, fourth, fifth, fourth, 10th and sixth. And, in the case of his victory in China, nearly from the very back of the grid.
His weekend was just 45 seconds from pointlessness when his mechanics completed one of the fastest engine changes imaginable to get him out just in time to take part in qualifying. Otherwise he would have started from the back row.
Then it was a mixture of a brilliant strategy call and his surgically precise passing that did the rest.
His opportunity came when Pierre Gasly drove his Toro Rosso into team-mate Brendon Hartley. Debris was sprayed about and the safety car came out on lap 31 of 56.
Red Bull assessed their options. Team manager Jonathan Wheatley briefed team principal Christian Horner on the risks and possible rewards of peeling into the pits for new tyres. Horner decided to bring his pair in. ‘You can’t phone a friend,’ he joked when asked if he made the final call.
In came Max Verstappen and Ricciardo, the only front-runners to do so. They lost a place each. But, on the fresher and faster rubber, Ricciardo carved his way sweetly past his rivals to clinch his first win since Baku last year.
‘I don’t seem to win boring races,’ he said. ‘The mechanics worked their butts off for this reward.’
The sheer madness, badness and brashness of Verstappen was on display as he planted himself on the outside of Turn 7.
Lewis Hamilton was inside him. The Briton held his line. Verstappen veered off track at a place impossible to pass. And so Hamilton escaped from a close encounter with a wrecking ball of a Red Bull, and consequently his title deficit was reduced to just nine points.
But behind that pleasing surface Hamilton spelt out his fears for the season. ‘It is clear from this weekend that we are not the quickest,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve lost performance since the first race in Melbourne.’
Hamilton’s prospects were dramatically helped when Sebastian Vettel was caught in Verstappen’s claws moments after his own reprieve. The spin earned the Dutchman a 10-second penalty and condemned Vettel, the championship leader, to limp home in eighth place.
It was a thrilling passage of racing — as good as any during the current Formula One era — not least when we factor in Ricciardo’s surge of surgical precision from sixth to first to capitalise on a bravura strategy call by his Red Bull team. Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas was second and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen third.