Daniel Ricciardo admits his initial response was to cry when he first felt the engine problem which put his eventual race win under jeopardy at the Monaco GP on Sunday.
The Australian was controlling the pace at the front after maintaining the lead from pole but, shortly after his pit-stop, felt a loss of power from his TAG Heuer-branded Renault engine as he lost the MGU-K part of his ERS.
That would allow Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton to close up behind but the Red Bull’s advantage in the corners and with tyre conservation proved enough to hold his rivals at bay.
“I wanted to close my eyes and start crying because I thought that was it. That race was over,” he said afterwards.
Had the problem forced him into retirement, it would have been the second time in three years that Ricciardo had, had victory snatched from his grasp in Monte Carlo.
“When the lap I got the problem today, all I was thinking of was ‘What the hell do I need to do to win this race?’,” the 28-year-old continued
“I’ve done everything this weekend, I did everything in ’16 – that’s why I just wanted to close my eyes and go and hide in a corner.”
“Then when [race engineer] Simon said it’s not going to get better, but it is what it is – I was like, alright, well maybe I can pull off a great victory and maybe the satisfaction will be even higher!”
Red Bull revealed the loss of the MGU-K meant Ricciardo was around 25% down on power than normal, with the ERS responsible for around 160 of the total number of horsepower.
Explaining the severity of the situation, Daniel added: “I only used six gears for the rest of the race. We’ve got eight on a Formula 1 so that’s kind of an example of how down on power we were. We don’t use all eight here, it is a short track, but still we were down a lot.
“I was just managing the tyres a lot, at the end I was pushing a bit more but it was still costing me I don’t know, I would say a good second a lap. A lot.
“Also because the rear brakes get hot because of the [MGU-]K that failed. So the rear brakes got really hot, we had to go seven percent forwards with the brakes. For example maybe we change it one or two percent during a whole race, so to go seven percent is a lot.”
To have made it to the checkered flag and finally achieve his Monaco redemption made the hard work all worth it though.
“Thanks to the team we got it back. I’m stoked!” Ricciardo grinned. “A lot of things to manage, but we did it. And who cares? We did it!
“They made it hard for me, but we got it done.”
