MOTORSPORT: ‘Remarkable’ Ricciardo’s high five

Withstanding the challenge of triple world champion Lewis Hamilton in the closing laps, carsales.com.au global ambassador Daniel Ricciardo has notched his fifth consecutive podium finish in Formula 1.

That makes the recently-turned 28-year-old Ricciardo the third Australian to have achieved that feat – the other two being our only F1 world champions, Sir Jack Brabham (who won the title in 1959, ’60 and ’66) and Alan Jones (1980).

Two weeks after winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Ricciardo was third last night in the Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring, a short circuit in the Styrian mountains run by the same energy drink company that owns the team for which he drives.

Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas won the race for Mercedes ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who stretched his championship lead over Hamilton to 20 points.

Bottas is only 15 points behind Hamilton now after his second victory since joining Mercedes, while Ricciardo is a comfortable fourth after his win in Baku and four third places in the past five GPs.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner described Ricciardo’s latest performance as “remarkable”, particularly his defence against the charging Hamilton on the second last lap.

“He’s great under pressure, a huge amount of pressure, and he’s driving qualifying laps at the end there,” Horner said.

“He knew he had to make the time in the middle sector to buy himself a little bit of distance coming on to the start-finish straight. It was just zero mistakes.

“It’s very easy to go in [to a corner] too deep, lock a brake up and then the other car gets the undercut [out of the corner], but he judged it perfectly – he picked his braking point, he nailed the apex and that gave Lewis nowhere to go.

“It was a fantastic race from Daniel after making a good start, including a good passing move on the fast-starting [Ferrari-engined] Haas of Romain Grosjean.

“He then drove a very disciplined race; consistently and competitively. He came under serious challenge from Lewis in the closing laps, but defended firmly and fairly and it was great to see him on the podium at our home GP.”

In this year’s F1 field the only other drivers to achieved five straight podiums have been Vettel, Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen – men with 10 world titles between them.

While there was only 0.65 seconds between Bottas and Vettel at the chequered flag in Austria, Ricciardo was little more than 6 seconds away from victory despite a Renault power unit not a match for the Mercedes and Ferrari – and 1.4 seconds ahead of Hamilton, who had started eighth after an unscheduled gearbox change.

“I do love a fight and Lewis came out of nowhere in the last few laps,” Ricciardo said.

“It felt like the gap was stable and then within a handful of laps he was catching me pretty rapidly.

“I then had two laps to go and had to defend, which made it a pretty exciting race for me.

“To have good speed around here in dry conditions was a pleasant surprise for us.

“I had Seb [Vettel] in front of me pretty much for the whole race and I know that his long runs [in practice] on Friday looked quite a lot quicker than ours, so we didn’t really expect to have a similar race pace to him or Mercedes today.

“Just to hold Lewis off, have a fight, defend and come out in front was cool.

“Another podium is pretty sweet. I enjoyed it up there.

“Silverstone (next weekend’s British GP) is going to be great with these 2017 cars, so I’m looking forward to that.”

Ricciardo’s teenage teammate Max Verstappen had his fifth retirement in the past seven races and third straight, his race over this time at the first corner.

He had made a dreadful start due to clutch problems and ended up in a midfield melee, in which Daniel Kyvat – driving for Red Bull’s second team Toro Rosso – ran into the McLaren-Honda of Fernando Alonso, who then spun Verstappen.

“There is no blame on anyone [within Red Bull Racing], we have just had a lot of bad luck recently,” said highly-rated Verstappen, now seventh in the championship and 62 points behind Ricciardo.

“It’s definitely not nice at the moment and I’m very disappointed again, but it’s also very important to keep pushing everyone forward as there are still many races to go. We just hope that the next race will be better.”

Alonso, already thoroughly fed up in the final year of his McLaren-Honda contract, also was out of the race on that first lap.

There were questions about whether Bottas had jumped the start from pole position, but officials gave him the all-clear.

Mercedes has now won five of the nine GPs this season and leads Ferrari by 33 points in the constructors’ championship.

While Vettel heads the drivers’ championship, his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen has been described by Fiat and Ferrari chief Sergio Marchionne as “a bit of a laggard” at times and needing to “show a higher level of commitment” if he is to be retained next season.

Raikkonen led briefly as others pitted in Austria but, having started third, was fifth at the finish.

It was a brilliant race for Frenchman Grosjean and his American-built Haas, finishing ahead of the Mercedes-powered Force India and Williams cars.

Driving a Ferrari-engined car, it was a timely result with the clock ticking on Raikkonen’s days at the most famous team in F1.

Formula 1 drivers’ world championship standings after nine of 20 rounds – 1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 171 points; 2. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 151; 3. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Mercedes) 136; 4. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 107; 5. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 83; 6. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 50; 7. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Red Bull-Renault) 45; 8. Esteban Ocon (France, Force India-Mercedes) 39; 9. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Renault) 29; 10. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 22; 11. Lance Stroll (Canada, Williams-Mercedes) 18; 12. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Renault) 18; 13. Romain Grosjean (France, Haas-Ferrari) 18; 14. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, Haas-Ferrari) 11; 15. Pascal Wehrlein (Germany, Sauber-Ferrari) 5; 16. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Renault) 4; 17. Fernando Alonso (Spain, McLaren-Honda) 2.

F1 constructors’ standings – 1. Mercedes 287 points; 2. Ferrari 254; 3. Red Bull- Renault 152; 4. Force India-Mercedes 89; 5. Williams-Mercedes 40; 6. Toro Rosso-Renault 33; 7. Haas-Ferrari 29; 8. Renault 18; 9. Sauber-Ferrari 5; 10. McLaren 2.