Ricciardo: I haven’t felt this comfortable driving for a long time

Daniel Ricciardo makes a very good impression after returning to the AlphaTauri team after recovering from a hand injury. In Mexico City he set the fourth fastest time in qualifying and took 7th place in the race, after which talks arose that he could replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull Racing, but at the FIA ​​press conference in Sao Paulo the Australian tried to deny this.

Daniel Ricciardo: “Everything related to my contract for next year has to do with AlphaTauri. As long as this is the case, I’ll be honest about it.

For me personally, a weekend like in Mexico City had a very good effect on my state of mind. It also benefited the team as it moved up to 8th in the Constructors’ Championship, and moving up two places in one go is a huge achievement. I think it creates a very happy atmosphere and I’m happy that I get to create it. I am happy with our team and will try to continue to show good results when I play for AlphaTauri.

Of course I believe that one successful weekend is not enough, but considering that everything went well from the start of training to the finish of the race, that says something. Obviously I had difficulties in recent years, and there were few such weekends, but this year I am trying to rebuild myself, and people are already starting to say that they see the old me.

I haven’t felt this comfortable driving a car in a long time, and the AT04 is a relatively new vehicle for me, and yet I got this feeling quite quickly. I think I already have a good understanding of what I want to achieve with the car, although perhaps we still didn’t expect to get a fourth result in qualifying and we were only a few tenths behind the pole time. This immediately created the feeling that we were really competitive.

But now we have completely switched to preparing for the weekend in Sao Paulo, and now we have to start everything from the very beginning. Here we only get one training, but we already understand better what the machine settings should be. Although this is still a different track and the conditions are different, we will try to continue in the same way.”