Podium for Dan, Seb fifth after epic duel

July 7, 2014 by Infiniti

NORTHAMPTON, England – Daniel Ricciardo took a deserved fourth podium finish of the season at the British Grand Prix after switching to a one-stop strategy that saw him fend off pressure from rivals behind and hold together his final set of tires for 37 laps until the checkered flag.

Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, finished fifth, the champion winning an epic battle with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso that defined the last third of the race.

The race was won by Lewis Hamilton, who took his fifth victory of the season ahead of Williams' Valtteri Bottas. Championship leader Nico Rosberg was forced to retire from the lead of the race with gearbox trouble on lap 29. The race had to be restarted after Kimi Raikkonen crashed heavily on lap one, an accident that led to a one-hour delay as a guardrail was repaired. During the red flag period the team opted to swap Daniel and Seb's starting medium tires for hard compound Pirellis, a choice the pit wall believed would offer more strategic options as the race unfolded.

When the race started again, Daniel struggled to find pace and was passed by both Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso. He pitted on lap 15 and the plan was to make another pit stop, but following discussions between team and driver the decision was taken to stay out and attempt to make the tires last until the checkered flag. Rising through the field thanks to good overtaking moves and late-pitting one-stop cars, Daniel rose to third place. With 15 laps to go, the Australian had a 10-second cushion to Jenson Button, but the McLaren driver's tires were newer by 13 laps. Button made up ground quickly and by the final lap he was just 1.8 seconds behind Ricciardo. Daniel held on bravely, however, to claim what he called 'the best third place I've ever got.'

'I feel good,' said Ricciardo. 'I'm not normally ecstatic with a third, but I really am today, obviously to redeem myself from yesterday and also the fact that I don't think we had an awesome race car today, but we made it work. We used the cards that we had and played the game well, so I was really happy to make a one-stop work. For the last two laps, I saw Jenson coming and thought I was probably going to be a bit vulnerable but we held on. The one stop wasn't planned. We pitted quite early on the Prime because we were quite slow and it wasn't working, so we came in for the Option and, at one point, my engineer pretty much said alright four laps to go on this tire then let's box. I said the pace seems OK. The tires aren't getting any worse, and let's try and stay out or at least think about keeping me out there, and he said OK we'll look at our options. Then, a few laps later he said do you think you can go to the end? There's 15 or 20 laps to go. And I said, at the moment I think we can give it a crack. And so, yeah, we did and it paid off.'

For Seb the race was all about an enthralling, wheel-to-wheel battle with Alonso that, according to Team Principal Christian Horner, was brought about by the strategy the champion raced to.

'After the initial delay, we elected to change both drivers onto the harder tire for the restart, which we believed would give us more strategic options,' said Horner. 'We decided to pit relatively early to try and get the undercut on the McLaren cars ahead and, whilst that was successful with both the cars, unfortunately it put us out of the range of a one stop with Sebastian. After we pitted him for the second time, he dropped behind Fernando and then had an enthralling battle with him, finally making a great move to get the pass. However it cost him a great deal of time to be able to catch the cars ahead, so fifth was the maximum we could achieve with Sebastian today.'

The duel between the two champions was a stunning display of close racing skill, with both drivers leaving nothing on the table in the tussle. Sebastian eventually made the decisive move on lap 46, the champion pulling alongside the Ferrari driver on the pit straight and then edging past through Copse.

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The pair also took the time to vociferously complain to their teams about the other's ability to keep within the track limits, arguments Sebastian later said had 'got a bit silly.'

'It felt very close with Fernando – maybe a bit too close,' said Vettel. 'It got a bit silly when we both started to complain about the other going off track. I don't think the people care too much if the car is a little bit to the left or the right. I got the message that I should respect the limits and that he was complaining, so I was doing the same thing. I'm not sure who won the list keeping. I think twice it was maybe a bit too harsh into Turn 6, but it was good to get the move at the end. I expected to get third today; the pace was there but the strategy wasn't right. I'm looking forward to my home race in Germany. It's always special to race there.'

Daniel's 15 points for third place keep him third in the Drivers' World Championship. He now has 98 points, 11 points more than fourth-placed Fernando Alonso. Seb's 10 point from Silverstone leave him seventh in the Drivers' standings with 70 points – three behind Bottas.