We struggled with a broken car, admits Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo has said his France Grand Prix was disrupted by a series of problems that left him with a 'wounded car' by the end of the race, as Kimi Raikkonen swept past him to claim the third spot on the podium.

A good weekend for Red Bull was almost a great one, as it looked as though both Max Verstappen and Ricciardo could both end up on the podium together behind comfortable leader Lewis Hamilton.

But Ricciardo began to lose power with 10 laps remaining, allowing Raikkonen in the Ferrari to finally get past him and claim third, despite struggling to sixth position in qualifying, off the pace of the Red Bull cars.

The Aussie admitted that the car had suffered issues with the front wing which impacted his downforce, and that he knew at that point that Kimi would catch him.

He said: “It seemed we were catching Max and pulling away from Kimi at the time and then when I pitted, the boys said the front left part of the wing was damaged.

“They think it happened about two laps before the pit stop because I started, all of a sudden, to get quite a lot of understeer.

“I don’t know if it was a failure or we hit some debris but that broke, so then already with the soft tyre, we were struggling when we left the pits and then I think a few laps later the team said the right part broke, so both parts identically seemed to break,” the Aussie continued.

“Obviously because of that we had a lot less downforce and understeering so with Kimi, he was always going to catch us with that pace. But as I said, we were a wounded car from just before the first pit stop.”