MOTORSPORT: Dan furious over failure as Kimi triumphs

Kimi Raikkonen has broken the longest victory drought in Formula 1 history and the world title fight was kept alive another week after more heartbreak for Daniel Ricciardo – his seventh retirement with mechanical failure this season.

Ricciardo was so infuriated that he put a fist through the wall of his room in the Red Bull garage at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas.

He had been running fourth, six seconds ahead of teammate Max Verstappen, who charged from 18th on the grid to finish second to Raikkonen’s Ferrari and ahead of the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton.

“Incredibly frustrating … pretty tough to take,” the carsales.com.au global ambassador said later.

The latest Renault power unit failure came just nine laps into the United States Grand Prix and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner made a pointed remark about Ricciardo needing to have “a word with his future employer” – Renault’s factory team.

“It’s just frustrating to keep losing him from races,” Horner said.

“He would have been equally strong [as Verstappen] in the second half of the race.

“I feel very, very sorry for him. He’s just taken his frustration out in his room by putting his fist through a wall.

“He doesn’t blame the team in any way – he knows we’re doing everything we can.”

Ferrari got its strategies right today – although Sebastian Vettel made contact with Ricciardo on the opening lap and spun himself yet again, dropping to 15th – while Mercedes got its wrong, with Lewis Hamilton having to make two stops for tyre changes to the one of the other frontrunners.

Vettel recovered to finish fourth and keep the title fight alive until Mexico next weekend, although Hamilton has a 70-point lead, needing to score just five more points in the three remaining races.

Raikkonen had waited 2044 days for his 21st GP victory – since his success with Lotus in Melbourne in March 2013, 113 races earlier.
It’s also a record 15 years and 212 days since his first win in 2003 and, having turned 39 recently, he’s the oldest winner in F1 since Nigel Mansell in Adelaide in 1994.

“Obviously I’m happy. Just proving some people wrong is enough fun for me,” said ‘Iceman’ Raikkonen, who has been dropped by Ferrari for next season and will return to his original team, Sauber, in a swap with French youngster Charles Leclerc.

“It’s not a big deal for me – if it (victory) comes, it comes; if it doesn’t, it really doesn’t change my life one bit.”

There was less than 2.35 seconds between the top three finishers, with Hamilton trying to overtake Vettel in the closing stages but running wide on his blistered tyres.

While Hamilton has 346 championship points to Vettel’s 276, Raikkonen is now on 221 and has overtaken Mercedes No.2 Valtteri Bottas, who is on 216, ahead of Verstappen on 191 and Ricciardo 146.

Mercedes, which had won in Texas the past five years, still has a 66-point lead, 563-497, in the constructors’ championship over Ferrari, which had not triumphed in the US since 2006 at Indianapolis, with Red Bull third on 337.

Despite another failure in Ricciardo’s car, Renault’s factory team scored its biggest points haul of the season in Texas – 14 from Nico Hulkenberg’s sixth place and Carlos Sainz’s seventh – and is fourth in the constructor standings on 106.

As shattered as he is today, Mexico offers some hope for Ricciardo next weekend as Verstappen won there for Red Bull last year and the high altitude reduces the power advantages the Mercedes and Ferrari engines.

“I want to be able to celebrate with the team at least one more time and be on the podium to enjoy that feeling, but we’re running out of races,” Ricciardo said.

“It’s incredibly frustrating to retire so early in the race today. I just don’t seem to have any luck at the moment.

“Everything just switched off and it seemed pretty much identical to the issue I had in Bahrain at the beginning of the year.

“I couldn’t even communicate with anyone on the radio, so it looks like a battery failure.

“Seeing how the race played out makes it even harder to take as it could have been pretty interesting – it was a great afternoon for Max.

“A lot of times this year there have been things out of my control, but I can only keep trying.

“The biggest shame is that I only have a handful of races left with Red Bull and I want to have more highs than we’ve had.”