Daniel Ricciardo’s fighting talk as he labels Mexican GP P4 ‘no fluke’

Daniel Ricciardo said his P4 quali position was “no fluke” after he beat Sergio Perez, both Mclaren and both Mercedes in Mexico.

If the Australian was searching for a comeback performance, this was it. His first race weekend in Austin had been plagued by poor strategy and damage but in Mexico, he looked every inch his old self.

Early on in the weekend, Ricciardo emerged as a potential for Q3 but it was only as the weekend reached that stage that he showed just how high his ceiling was.

Daniel Ricciardo insists ‘no fluke’ about AlphaTauri performance

Ricciardo put the AlphaTauri in P4, his best quali result since Monza 2022 and AlphaTauri’s best since 2021 but denied there was any luck in it, saying the result was “no fluke.”

“I’m very happy with P4, it’s an amazing result for us as a team,” he said. “But on one hand I think [while] the result is crazy, already from yesterday, really from the first lap, I just had a lot of good feeling in the car. Just a few things that let’s say didn’t go our way last weekend.

“I don’t know if I should use the word crazy because I think today wasn’t a fluke. Q1 Q2, Yuki [Tsunoda] was great and gave us a slipstream so that definitely gave us that extra little tempo but Q3 we’re out there on our own and we had real pace. So I think from that point of view, no fluke, we’ve got the pace to do it.”

Ricciardo admitted he returned to F1 this weekend with a “chip on my shoulder” after a trouble filled weekend clouded his first back in Austin.

“I certainly carried a little bit of a chip on my shoulder this week coming into the weekend. I just couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait to get back in the car. I was as excited and hungry as I’ve felt in a very long time.

“So really happy to keep those emotions bottled in and use them well on track and obviously today’s half the job. You would expect the top teams to maybe show a little bit more on long runs, but personally, I feel great in the car, full confidence, so I’ll put up a fight.”

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