Daniel Ricciardo considers the uproar over the crash between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris last Sunday in Austria to be exaggerated. The British press, in particular, has been all over it for days. In the run-up to the British GP at Silverstone, the knives are out. “Once friends and now enemies, that’s probably the gist of all the stories,” says Ricciardo, with a touch of irony.
According to the Australian from Visa RB, there wasn’t much to it on Sunday. “I saw two drivers fighting for the win. And if you’re leading, you don’t just let someone pass. Such a touch can happen and nine times out of ten it has no consequences. It cost them both a good result this time, and for Lando, it was the end of the race, but I think the outcome was bigger than what actually happened on the track. I didn’t see anything shocking. It was probably on the edge, but was it dangerous or reckless? No!”
Hard Racing is Expected When Victory is at Stake
According to Daniel Ricciardo, it’s logical that there’s hard racing when victory is at stake. “In general, you fight harder for a win than for a fifteenth place, that’s just how it works,” says the former teammate of Max Verstappen at Red Bull. “You can expect these kinds of battles. I’m not saying everything always goes by the book, but I think it’s good that there’s hard fighting. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well for them, but that’s how it sometimes goes.”
Asserting Your Position in the Racing World
As a racer, you sometimes have to drive aggressively, argues Ricciardo. “No one in this sport wants to be the one who is laughed at for defending too weakly. You want to assert your position against everyone. You don’t want others to think before they initiate an overtaking maneuver: ‘This is going to be easy.’ So to some extent, you just have to work with your elbows. And we know that Max has been doing that since his first day in Formula 1.”
Ricciardo continues: “Max is naturally a tough racer, that’s close to his nature. If you want to overtake Max, you know you have to fight for it. But beyond that, nothing changes. You just know that you have to initiate a very good overtaking maneuver to have a chance of success and that everything has to be right. In that respect, I think Lando learned from the incident in Austria. Lando probably thought he had succeeded, but Max said: ‘No, not today!’ You live and you learn.”
Max’s Admirable Racing Style
According to Ricciardo, the racers have a lot of trust in each other and you can see that on the track. This includes Max Verstappen, he emphasizes. “Max is a tough racer. But it’s not that we don’t trust him to race wheel-to-wheel, not at all. With him, you just know that you won’t get that extra inch for free. I haven’t read anything, but I suspect that everything is being blown out of proportion. Max is as he races and I think that’s what many fans admire about him. So he hasn’t really changed. However, he has matured since his entry into Formula 1, in the sense that he less often gets into these kinds of situations. And that’s only a good thing.”
