Ricciardo laughs off Brazil penalty: 'It has been the trend lately'

Daniel Ricciardo deadpanned that he could “laugh about” his five-place grid penalty for the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday, saying it was simply “the trend lately” during his run of bad luck in Formula 1.

Red Bull was forced to change the turbocharger on Ricciardo’s power unit ahead of this weekend’s running at Interlagos after the spray used by the trackside marshals in Mexico to put out a fire on his car caused the component to fail.

As a result, Ricciardo will drop five places on the grid for Sunday’s race, coming as the latest setback for the Australian as he still chases his first podium finish since Monaco.  

“I got a call last week, and the team made me aware of it,” Ricciardo said.

“I can laugh about it now, because it has just been the trend lately. What do you do? It’s out of my control. We’ll just try to make the best of the weekend.

“Obviously I’ve had a few days to digest that now, so I’ve come to terms with it. I’ll just try to qualify well like I did in Mexico and try and race hard.

“We had a good car this afternoon in the long run, so that gives me confidence to race well on Sunday.”

Ricciardo confirmed that he intends to take part in all three stages of qualifying as he only has a five-place grid penalty, but will look to run an alternate strategy to the front-running cars in a bid to climb back up the order.

“I think what was interesting today was that all three tyres seemed to work not too bad on the long runs,” Ricciardo said.

“It gives us options to probably start with something different to the cars that all be in front.

“In my mind, I want to do something different because it’s likely I’ll start out of that race initially, so I’ll try to give myself a bit more of a chance."