HRT: Ricciardo shines during late rain shower | 2011 Hungarian GP team review

Daniel Ricciardo, HRT, Hungaroring, 2011

HRT: Ricciardo shines during late rain shower | 2011 Hungarian GP team review: "
Daniel Ricciardo finished ahead of his team mate and a Virgin in his third Grand Prix,
and showed good pace during the wet period late in the race.

	Daniel Ricciardo	Vitantonio Liuzzi
Qualifying position	22	21
Qualifying time comparison (Q1)	1’26.479 (+0.156)	1’26.323
Race position	18	20
Laps	66/70	65/70
Pit stops	3	5

HRT drivers’ lap times throughout the race (in seconds):

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2011drivercolours.csv

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70
Daniel Ricciardo	130.919	115.946	112.653	110.349	109.487	108.126	107.573	106.378	105.815	106.079	105.715	105.599	107.816	124.66	97.466	93.272	92.752	95.486	95.161	92.875	92.71	92.549	93.921	94.357	93.596	93.688	93.734	101.566	118.483	90.139	90.071	90.592	92.061	90.981	91.672	92.161	94.654	93.47	91.379	91.583	92.883	95.761	105.853	120.553	93.669	93.525	103.568	103.546	98.692	93.818	91.78	90.205	90.115	90.686	89.057	91.269	91.345	91.229	89.534	91.337	89.267	88.876	89.248	89.222	89.204	95.795
Vitantonio Liuzzi	144.729	115.128	112.901	110.744	109.069	108.302	107.723	107.198	106.807	106.907	105.98	108.22	127.302	99.055	95.92	96.032	92.804	93.061	93.132	97.988	93.327	93.726	93.077	93.042	95.92	112.246	91.507	94.245	93.383	91.624	92.265	95.04	92.044	91.862	94.142	93.892	94.541	118.47	91.255	92.834	91.592	91.264	91.272	96.991	95.182	93.59	106.76	106.578	119.689	100.849	105.207	112.713	89.208	93.304	89.63	90.067	91.052	91.413	90.551	90.922	91.293	91.192	89.846	90.937	90.971

Daniel Ricciardo, HRT, Hungaroring, 2011

Daniel Ricciardo
A tenth of a second off Liuzzi in qualifying, Ricciardo clearly had his sights set on beating his team mate: “When you see that the times are so close it is a little bit frustrating to not be one spot ahead,” he said.
Ricciardo’s lap times were on a par with Liuzzi’s during the race in the dry. Unlike his team mate, Ricciardo did not switch to intermediate tyres during the late shower.
At this point his laps were far quicker than Timo Glock’s, the closest driver to him on slick tyres, albeit softs that had done a stint’s service.
Perhaps more significantly for Ricciardo, his lap times also compared favourably with those of the two Toro Rosso drivers, both of whom stayed on slicks. Compare all their lap times here.
He brought the car home in front of Jerome d’Ambrosio, who’d been ahead of him until the rain started to fall.
Ricciardo declared himself “satisfied” with his performance, saying: “I feel we are progressing well; Silverstone to Nürburgring was a very big step and this time we have taken another good step.
“I want to be ahead of our main rivals and prove I can go the distance in the race. The most positive thing today was that we made the right decisions with pit stops, so we need to try and stay in this path.”
Daniel Ricciardo 2011 form guide
Vitantonio Liuzzi
Liuzzi damaged his front wing in qualifying and hovered worryingly near to the 107% mark before putting in a lap good enough to beat his team mate and d’Ambrosio.
But his race went wrong at the start: “We got off to a good start until someone hit me from behind coming out of the chicane, causing me to spin. I lost a lot of time there and then the balance of the car wasn’t ideal.”
He also had more problems with the front wing: “We suffered again a problem with the front wing and the front tyres were suffering a lot as a result of this. We replaced the nose and the tyres but we still were suffering from massive understeer.”
Liuzzi had just got back in front of his team mate when the rain began to fall late in the race, and his switch to intermediate tyres and then back to slicks left him last.
Vitantonio Liuzzi 2011 form guide
2011 Hungarian Grand Prix