Daniel Ricciardo jokes ‘bring Nelson Piquet back’ to save his Singapore GP weekend

Daniel Ricciardo has joked that he would like Nelson Piquet Jr. back on the F1 grid to help save his Singapore Grand Prix weekend, making reference to the 2008 Crashgate scandal. 

Ricciardo was knocked out in Q1 at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in what could be his final F1 qualifying outing.

The Australian’s immediate F1 future is unclear with rumours suggesting he will be replaced by Liam Lawson for the United States Grand Prix next month.

Ricciardo’s latest underperformance will not help his chances as Yuki Tsunoda - in the other VCARB - progressed into Q3.

In typical Ricciardo fashion, he found the humorous side of the situation, joking that he wants Piquet Jr. back on the grid to cause a well-timed Safety Car to propel him up the order as was the case in 2008.

Renault ordered the Brazilian to crash on purpose to bring out the Safety Car and help Fernando Alonso ultimately win the inaugural race in Singapore.

"Obviously, the Q1 thing, that sucks. With all the s*** going on, I honestly felt [it] would be good today. So that's why I'm more just like, how did we end up in Q1?,” Ricciardo said as quoted by Autosport.

"I try to be optimistic but today was a very pessimistic day, so I'll go drown in my ice bath, you'll find me there tomorrow, floating."

"Hopefully, a well-timed safety car. Bring Piquet back, and let's make it happen."

Ricciardo showed great pace throughout practice, with VCARB looking like they were the fifth-fastest team heading into qualifying.

However, it fell apart for the former Red Bull driver, citing a lack of performance on the softs.

"We didn't really change much," Ricciardo added. "We were in a good place yesterday so we were pretty upbeat about it, we weren't chasing our tail. Honestly, the medium this morning was good, it felt like we started off on the same foot as yesterday but then I put the soft on and I was nowhere.

"So we did a bit of fine-tuning for quali and I thought we would be OK, but again, I wasn't comfortable on the soft.

"It was... I would say miserable because we were somewhere yesterday, genuinely, and we didn't expect... there wasn't any big mistakes but I knew when I crossed the line that it wasn't quick. It just didn't feel that nice

"This morning, you could say that 'oh that soft didn't work' but we had three of them today and we weren't competitive on any of them."