'Didn't want to be there': Daniel Ricciardo's 'pure rage' after blunder

Australian Formula 1 star Daniel Ricciardo has opened up about one of his lowest points on the racetrack, revealing he was left feeling ‘pure rage’ during the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix.

That particular race has always been an eventful one for Ricciardo, but his race there in 2016, during arguably Ricciardo’s strongest push for a world championship, stands as one that tested his mettle more than any other.

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Having qualified his Red Bull RB12 on pole on the notoriously narrow and winding Monaco circuit, Ricciardo hadn’t put a foot wrong until it was time for his pitstop.

Ricciardo was called in, but the team weren’t ready for him - leaving him helpless as Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton inherited the lead, with the the Australian rejoining in second.

With overtaking all but impossible at Monaco, a furious Ricciardo was forced to tail the eventual world champion to the end of the race.

“Even four years on, I remember this day in so much detail. It’s like a video in my mind,” Ricciardo wrote in the latest addition to his Dan’s Diary series while F1 remains on hiatus.

“I can picture myself driving through the corner before the tunnel and that pit stop...I was so angry.

“I didn’t want to talk to anyone afterwards. I certainly didn’t want any sympathy.

“It was just pure rage.

“I remember standing on the podium with Lewis. He’d won a race that I had under control. I just didn’t want to be there.”

Ricciardo isn’t generally known as one to sook too much though, and says he found a way to pick himself up after the podium.

While he and Red Bull would go on to right their Monaco wrongs in 2018, where Ricciardo claimed his last F1 victory before his move to Renault, the 30-year-old said it still stings to think of what might have been.

“I had a moment of clarity in the media pen afterwards where I thought that if finishing second at Monaco is the worst day in my life, then I should probably wake up,” he said.

“So that was when the anger started to turn into disappointment.”

McLaren boss opens up on Daniel Ricciardo signing

Chief executive Zak Brown has revealed why Daniel Ricciardo initially rejected a move to McLaren when he was coming off contract in 2018.

Brown on Friday said the Australian driver was McLaren's first choice to replace Ferrari-bound Spaniard Carlos Sainz and Sebastian Vettel was never in the frame.

The former world champions had actually tried to sign Ricciardo in 2018 when the seven-times race winner was at Red Bull mulling his options.

After talks with McLaren, Ricciardo eventually decided to sign with Renault.

And Brown has now revealed why Ricciardo was initially unwilling to join the British team.

“Getting a Grand Prix winner like Daniel definitely is a sign we’ve going in the right direction,” Brown told Sky Sports on Tuesday.

“We went after him a couple of years ago before he made the decision not to join us.

“I’ve talked to him about it since and he went ‘you were coming off a pretty poor season’ - which was putting it politely - ‘but also there was a lot of this is what we’re going to do to rebuild the team’.

“I hadn’t brought in yet Andreas Seidl or James Key or restructured the leadership team.

“So there were a lot of promises and, coming off such a bad season, I could see how he would go ‘oh, let’s see how this plays out’.”