Red Bull wins as Ricciardo takes maiden victory

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F1 Grand Prix, GP Canada, Circuit Gilles Villeneuveca

Red Bull Racing have returned to their winning ways as Daniel Ricciardo took his maiden victory at Canada, taking the lead of the race only 3 laps from the end. Team mate Sebastian Vettel made it a double podium for the team as he finished 3rd.

Daniel Ricciardo, 1st: “I’m a grand prix winner! I think it still seems a bit surreal to be honest, just because it all happened so quickly at the end. I was third for a while and then it all happened in a really exciting fashion. Once I got past Perez I knew I just had to drive clean and get in Rosberg’s DRS zone and, from then on, it was just awesome. Finishing under the safety car made it a bit weird, but I wanted to make sure the two drivers who were in the accident were okay before I started celebrating. We achieved a great result today with first and third – so let’s enjoy it – but we will still have some work to do also. This will motivate the guys to work even harder and find even more, so I’m sure it will keep coming even better for us at the next few races.”

Sebastian Vettel, 3rd: “Congratulations to Daniel for his first win, which is very, very special, so I’m happy for him and happy for the team, especially after such a horrible winter. It’s nice to be able to finally break through to get a win this year and capitalise on Mercedes having a problem. I think we could have taken more risk with the strategy today – but it’s hard to know exactly what was going on around me when I’m not sitting on the pit wall. We have developed the car a lot this year, so we are going in the right direction, but we need to develop it even more for the straights, so there is still a lot of work ahead of us. We are here to keep pushing and to keep doing our best.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal: “An amazing race today and what an amazing race for Daniel to win his first Grand Prix. He’s been phenomenal since he joined the team and I think today he fully deserved the victory. We benefitted from the misfortune of Mercedes, but nonetheless he still had to be there and his pass on Perez was the deciding moment in the last ten laps. He was then able to make an easy pass on Nico with a couple of laps to go and to win in Montreal, against all expectation, was a phenomenal result. The added bonus of having Sebastian up there on the podium as well tops off a perfect day. After a good start, Seb unfortunately just got locked behind the Force India and no matter what we tried we couldn’t manage to pass – it was one of those frustrating races for Seb who in the end was fortunate not to be collected by the Williams and Force India. Thankfully both of those drivers escaped unhurt. Well done to everyone in the team today and at Renault for the first win of the season – it’s a great result and a great motivation for the forthcoming races.”

Thierry Salvi, Renault: “Congratulations to Daniel for his first victory in Formula One; we are proud to be part of the team that helped him achieve it and also to score the first win for the Energy F1. It was a stressful race with a lot of things going on in the background. Both power units were used at the maximum to try and stay in contact with the front row. We were stuck behind cars for quite a long time, especially with Seb, which was hard for the PU and we had to run at the limit temperature-wise. Both drivers were clever in managing the energy and the tyres and the result is there: the team did a great job today to put two cars on the podium.”