'All the cars around us ate us up' - Daniel Ricciardo opens up about early exit from Japan GP 2024 after a crash with Alex Albon

The Japanese Grand Prix 2024 race was won by Red Bull star  Max Verstappen as he beat his teammate, Sergio Perez. However, the race saw two crashes which forced a slight delay in the start of the game. Firstly, RB driver Daniel Ricciardo and Williams’ Alex Albon crashed at the start of the first lap which pulled out the red flag.

It happened just after the start of the race when Albon tried to overtake Ricciardo which caused the crash. This forced them to cut short their race and also triggered a slight delay in the start of the race. Now Ricciardo has opened up about the incident saying that he didn’t see Albon coming towards him.

He said, “Firstly, I felt it was very much under a racing incident scenario,” Ricciardo reacted to a media house. “Simply, we - Yuki and myself - struggled on the medium. I could see that he got away poorly. I got a bit of a jump and then went poorly. All the cars around us ate us up.”

“I struggled a lot”, says Daniel Ricciardo

Further speaking about the crash Daniel Ricciardo said that he felt at Turn 2 that things had started settling up before the crash. He said, “In Turn 2, I felt that it started to settle. Getting traction out of Turn 2, I struggled a lot. I could see an Aston. I saw Stroll on the outside. I was trying to hold him off.”

“I saw Alex’s onboard and he got so much better to drive out of Turn 2. He then got onto my right side. To be honest, at that point, I didn’t see Alex. Everyone got bottled up at Turn 3.”
Ricciardo further admitted that this was not the way he wanted a Sunday to go. “Not the way you want Sunday to go. In hindsight, we should have put on a soft. But coming into the race, we thought [mediums] were the best thing. That’s what happened”, says Ricciardo.

Meanwhile, in the 50th Lap of the race, George Russell and Oscar Piastri once again crashed which forced them to go out. This is the second incident of their crash in the last few days. Earlier, Mercedes was fined €5,000 for an unsafe release of Russell into Piastri in qualifying.