“I think it’s a natural question after a victory,” Ricciardo admitted. “I
think I got asked after China if it means we’re in the title hunt. I
think Lewis still has a pretty good buffer on me” – the Briton has 110
points to his 72, with Vettel between them on 96 – “so we’re still on
the outside of that.
“It’s not impossible but not really at the forefront of my mind yet. But, even if it was, I’m not going to change
obviously the way that I’m driving or trying to attack. So, yeah,
Montreal will be interesting. We’ll try to get a few more podiums but
yeah, we’ve got to probably prove on at least one other circuit before
the summer break that we can win again. And then maybe we’re a nice
little outside chance.”As far as I am concerned I believe it is already a
three-way fight,” he said after finishing third in a damage-limiting
race on Sunday.
“Definitely. Ferrari are still the strongest, and their car was quick here and seems to have worked quite well so far in
the season, though they’ve dropped the ball a few times and we’ve
capitalised on that. But I still think they are doing the best job.
“Red Bull are due a Renault engine upgrade in the next race, in Canada, so
it’ll be interesting to see what that brings Sunday’s race was not the
most exciting, but I hope that the fans see this three-way battle as a
great race.
“I love it! It’s the greatest challenge that we have ever had. I’m loving that, and going super-deep into all the technical
knowledge. I’m really enjoying that.”But he made no secret that he did
not enjoy cruising round for 78 laps as everyone tried to conserve their
tyres in what he described as the longest race he’d ever been in.
“My problem is that I am open and honest,” he began. “I am really happy to
come third, because I don’t think we had the third fastest car here. I
nearly got P2 in qualifying, so we are in a good place, especially if
you look how we were here last year.
“But Monaco gets the biggest build-up as the most super race, and often the race itself isn’t as
exciting as the whole spectacle that is qualifying. That is always epic
here.I don’t know… Maybe F1 needs to apply a rule or something, that you
cannot have just one-stop races here, because more than one stop would
make things ore exciting. From the racing drivers’ point of view, we
just weren’t pushing here. It was insane how little I was pushing. I can
remember seeing my front tyres graining, and they were still doing that
even when I wasn’t pushing.
“When I was 10s behind Seb at one stage I was still pushing, I still believed I might win or make
something happen, that I might come up with something. Instead, my
engineers told me I had to back off.
