Ricciardo on AlphaTauri pace: It was no fluke

After securing fourth on the grid for Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo said he would allow himself an hour of celebration before focusing on turning Saturday’s qualifying result into points.

Ricciardo was just 0.216s off Charles Leclerc’s pole position time and outqualified Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez, who could only manage fifth place behind the Australian.

The result carries extra significance as Ricciardo, driving for Red Bull’s junior team AlphaTauri this year, has made it clear that he wants to take Perez’s seat at Red Bull when the Mexican’s contract expires at the end of 2024.

“Look, it’s cool,” Ricciardo said when pushed on what it means to outqualify Perez. “I got asked, oh you’re ahead of Checo tomorrow, how does that feel? I mean, it feels cool, but I’m ahead of a lot of people.”

He added: “There’s part of me which for the next hour wants to celebrate today, because it’s certainly a day that should be celebrated. I think the team as well, it’s not often they qualify this far up the grid, especially this year.

“I’m just glad I got the most out of it. Next hour we’ll enjoy, but then definitely focus on tomorrow and try to turn this into a bag of points.”

Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix will be Ricciardo’s second race back at AlphaTauri since he broke a bone in his hand during practice for the Dutch Grand Prix in August. He said he hadn’t expected to secure such a high grid position, but believes the car’s performance is genuine.

“Obviously P4 is amazing, but then when you look at pole, it was two-tenths, it’s not like Max or someone was seven or eight-tenths down the road,” Ricciardo added. “So the gap is just as cool as the position, if you know what I mean.

“We’re really there, and who knows what it means for tomorrow? I don’t feel today was a fluke. I really feel like we had strong pace.

“I felt with a perfect lap, going through it in my head last night, I thought maybe today we could be P6, P7 if everything goes well. I definitely had confidence we weren’t just a P10 car. But P4 is pretty cool.”

Ricciardo said he made a breakthrough with the car’s setup during the practice session in which he broke his hand at Zandvoort and only now has he been able to reap the rewards.

“We made some [setup] changes already in Zandvoort for P2, that session where we crashed, and those few laps I did, I remember on the hard tyre we were competitive and I actually felt alright, this is the direction we should start going with setup,” he said.

“But then with Austin last week, we didn’t really have enough knowledge on it with only one practice session [due to the sprint format], so you kind of have to race what you bring.

“I was very excited to come into this weekend, try it and see what it felt like. I think with my driving style and where I’m at with the car, it was the direction that made me feel a little bit more confident. Already the car has been good to me, I felt good in it. This just made me lean on it a bit harder.”