Exactly 10 years ago today, Daniel Ricciardo stood on the Monaco podium a broken man. He should have been celebrating his first victory on the most glamorous stage in motorsport.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Instead, a botched pit stop and a questionable strategy call conspired to rip it away from him. It had all started so brilliantly.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Ricciardo lit up the streets of the Circuit de Monaco in qualifying with a 1:13.622, beating Nico Rosberg by 0.169 seconds to claim his maiden F1 pole position.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Australian was in imperious form all weekend, and on a circuit where track position is everything, pole was as close to a golden ticket as it gets.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Race day brought rain, a delayed start and a safety car opening, but none of that troubled Ricciardo.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
He controlled the field from the front, building a commanding lead on full wet tyres as conditions slowly improved. The win looked his for the taking.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRed Bull’s strategy failure<\/p>\n
The pivotal moment came when Red Bull brought Ricciardo in early to switch from wets to intermediates, committing him to a two-stop strategy.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Mercedes, meanwhile, kept Lewis Hamilton out longer on wets before jumping directly to slicks in a single stop, a move that immediately put the strategic pressure on Ricciardo.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
When Red Bull finally called Ricciardo in for his second stop to fit slicks, disaster struck. A last-second change of tyre compound meant the set was not ready when he arrived in the pit box.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Ricciardo sat stranded, watching precious seconds drain away, before rejoining alongside Hamilton into Sainte D\u00e9vote, only to lose out on the exit.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
From there, the race was over. Monaco does not forgive, and Hamilton controlled the gap to take the chequered flag 7.2 seconds clear, with Ricciardo a devastated second.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
His pain was raw afterwards. “How do I feel? Without swearing it’s difficult,” Ricciardo said. “Like I’ve been run over by an 18-wheel truck for the second weekend in a row.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Having also lost a likely win in Spain the race before, the frustration was compounded. “From the outside, we put on a show but it shouldn’t have been as exciting as it was, two weekends in a row I have been screwed,” he added.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I actually hate being like this, being miserable. I got a podium in Monaco, I should be happy and grateful. But I have no idea what to say, and nothing good to say. Not today. I don’t think we can achieve anything today. I just want to get the hell out of here to be honest.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Two years later, Ricciardo would return to Monaco and finally claim the win he so desperately deserved in 2018, but on this day a decade ago, the sport offered one of its cruellest lessons: in F1, and especially in Monaco, what should be yours is never truly yours until the chequered flag falls.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exactly 10 years ago today, Daniel Ricciardo stood on the Monaco podium a broken man. He should have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-703301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}