Ricciardo takes “some of the blame” for slow F1 pitstop in Russian GP

Ricciardo was running in third after George Russell and Lance Stroll made their early switch to hard tyres.

As Mercedes looked as if it was going to stop Hamilton, who was running directly behind Ricciardo, McLaren fell for the dummy and pit him on Lap 23 in an attempt to cover off the undercut.

A lengthy stop cost Ricciardo a considerable amount of time and he revealed that it was partially down to his own mistake

“I don’t know,” Ricciardo replied when asked if his slow stop cost him a podium finish at Sochi. “It is something we will look at. I took some of the blame because I stopped a bit long. I could see that the mechanics had to readjust, so for sure I cost a bit of time there. 

“It looked like they were slow on the front, but maybe if I stop properly then we don’t have that problem. On the hard pace was good, and I got past Russell pretty quickly. Once I got close to Carlos we started to kill the tires. In the end, it is okay and will take the points.”

Ricciardo continued his strong run on form since the summer break, building on his victory last time out. 

The Australian is still wanting to find further improvements after struggling with “poor pace” at times.

“For the team there is encouragement with performance,” Ricciardo added. There could’ve been more points today, but we’ll keep looking at it. Personally for me, some moments were good and some not so. So I am still eager to find the speed in the car. It was not as comfortable a weekend as Monza, so a bit more tricky, and we were a bit compromised with Friday, and we never got back on top of it. So I will try to keep working on it.

“It is good points. There are still some things I want to look at with pace. There were times when I felt good, but the lap times were still not good, so I want to investigate a little bit what is up. The points today are good but with the poor pace, there is still some stuff missing. So we will try to figure that out.”

McLaren sits third in the constructors’ championship, 17.5 points ahead of Ferrari with seven rounds remaining.