Daniel Ricciardo admits he felt Red Bull deserved the clash between himself and Max Verstappen during the 2018 Azerbaijan GP.
The two drivers battled throughout the race in Baku, predominantly with the Australian on the tail of the Dutchman before finally getting ahead on track.
However, having again fallen behind through the pit-stop phase, another attempt to pass Max ended in disaster as he rear-ended his teammate approaching Turn 1.
Ricciardo has previously suggested the treatment towards Verstappen by Red Bull that day contributed to his decision to join Renault for 2019, and now he has explained exactly his mindset during the race.
“I was in the moment, you’re battling and, yes it’s a teammate, but I also see everyone as a competitor, so teammate or not we’re going to race hard,” he told F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast.
“We’d touched wheels a few times, where it was always Max coming into me as opposed to me coming into him and part of me was like I’m waiting for the team to say, ‘Boys, cut the sh*t’, but never really got that.
“Then I was like alright they’re going to tell us to swap, I’m faster they’ll just say, ‘Boys, you’ve tried it’s not working, swap positions or whatever before you do crash’ [but that didn’t happen either].”
On the incident itself, Ricciardo continued: “I still believe, I’ve let it go, but I sold him the dummy so there was enough room originally on the inside and then he closed it and we crashed.
“I’ll be honest at the time of impact I was like, ‘Who cares? They deserve this’, so that was my honest feeling, I wasn’t sad or like, ‘I just lost points’, it was more anger.
“I was like, ‘F**k you guys’ because I think everyone saw it coming, you know? And I felt like then it was also very 50-50 where I didn’t believe it was a 50-50 so it was then kind of the days after I guess I was still quite bitter.”
Also Read:
- Ricciardo: Red Bull wouldn’t have let me beat Verstappen to F1 title
- Ricciardo reveals Baku 2018 played a role in decision to leave Red Bull
The collision also came during Verstappen’s incident-filled start to the 2018 season, which had seen collide with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel in the two races prior.
Flash forward to now though and the 30-year-old believes Max has lost some of that ‘all or nothing’ nature.
“I think we [myself and Max] were good for each other, he certainly grew in that time and I want to say that he probably learned a bit from me being with the team longer and being older,” he suggested.
“And you can see it. He is less fiery, erratic than he was a couple of years ago and he has matured. I think he’s found his place now and if I contributed to that then great and if not then that’s cool as well.”
The relationship between the pair has also remained strong, with Ricciardo one of the first to congratulate Verstappen after he won the race in Austria.
“We quickly overcame things [clashes like Baku] and I think ultimately that’s because we respected each other,” he said.
“I know how competitive he is and he knows how competitive I am so things are going to happen, but I think we respect each other’s will to compete and we could kind of move on because of that.”