Daniel Ricciardo ‘punch my face in’ Nico Hulkenberg thought as Monza penalties addressed

Daniel Ricciardo is not giving up on continuing with VCARB next season

Daniel Ricciardo accepts partial blame for his second Italian GP penalty as work on his VCARB started too early, after a “more aggressive” approach brought contact with Nico Hulkenberg and the opening sanction.

Ricciardo picked up a five-second penalty after showing Haas driver Hulkenberg the dirt going into Ascari, as the “more aggressive” style which the Aussie adopted for Lap 1 backfired, though also left him with a sense of curiosity.

Daniel Ricciardo ‘punch my face in’ Nico Hulkenberg question

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

Ricciardo accepted that he did not give Hulkenberg enough room and apologised in a chat with his former Renault team-mate, but insisting he is not a “dirty” driver, he wanted to judge from Hulkenberg whether it was an incident which left him wanting to “punch my face in”, or a minor misjudgement?

“I felt the hit, but I don’t know, was he half a car in the grass, or did he just drop the outside tyre and that kind of locked him up on braking like, kind of sent him out?” Ricciardo pondered when discussing the incident with media including PlanetF1.com.

“Anyway, obviously, I didn’t give him enough room, period. So, yeah, at least I can do is apologise and I was also curious, how bad was it? I knew I was in the wrong, but was it like something that he wanted to punch my face in, or was it something that he was just like, ‘Yeah, you misjudged it by 10 centimeters’.

“It was a little bit, in a way, frustrating, because I had struggled on first laps this year. You know, big picture, I don’t think I’ve really gained many positions at all on Lap 1. So up until that point, it was going okay, and was, I think, being a bit more aggressive, which I think I’d liked.

“But then, yeah, maybe I was having too much fun being aggressive, and I got too aggressive.

“So anyway, I joke about it, but obviously I need to judge those things better, not ignoring it.

“I obviously firstly apologised, and then I asked: How bad was it? And obviously he said, ‘Yeah, you didn’t give me enough room’.

“But I also wanted to ask, like, ‘Did I kind of jerk, or did I just, like, progressively move across?’ Obviously, I like to be aggressive, but I’m not dirty, so I wanted to make sure, from his point of view, was it just aggressive, or was I being a bit of a prick? But I believe it was just elbows were a little too wide.”

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Ricciardo’s Italian GP worsened further after the Hulkenberg incident as he received an additional 10-second penalty for failing to serve the initial one correctly.

As Ricciardo brought his VCARB into the pit box, a crew member instinctively touched the front wing, counting as a breach as work cannot begin on the car until those five seconds have passed.

But, Ricciardo admitted that without his misjudgement with Hulkenberg, they would not have been in that situation in the first place.

VCARB utilise a no-blame culture and so there was no punishment for the crew member in question.

“Obviously, from that point of view, of course, we’ll look at it, but then, if I leave Nico a little bit more room, we don’t get the penalty, and we don’t put ourselves in that position,” said Ricciardo.

“So of course, I have to accept a part of that.”

The Monza circuit was resurfaced ahead of the 2024 Italian GP and the kerbs also re-profiled, Ricciardo revealing that the lack of kerbs found at certain track edges was brought up in the driver’s briefing.

Ricciardo pointed out that last year there was a kerb at the point of he and Hulkenberg’s incident, so if it were still there, the story may have been different.

“In driver’s briefing, we talked about some of these edges of the track, why there’s not a kerb or something, because even getting on the white line, you flick up dust in qualifying, and so it is tricky,” said Ricciardo.

“And again, I know what the conditions are today, but yeah, there was a kerb there last year, so maybe last year we would have got through it.”

Ricciardo finished the Italian GP P13, while for Hulkenberg it was P17, on a weekend where Constructors’ Championship rivals VCARB and Haas both walked away empty-handed.

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