In the round-up: Daniel Ricciardo says it was important for him to apologise to Carlos Sainz Jnr after their lap one clash at Imola and ‘clean the slate’ with the Ferrari driver
In brief
Sainz apology important to ‘clean the slate’ says RicciardoDaniel Ricciardo says it was important for him to apologise to Carlos Sainz Jnr after their lap one clash at Imola and ‘clean the slate’ with the Ferrari driver.
The pair collided at the first turn in the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, knocking Sainz out of the race and leaving Ricciardo with diffuser damage that hampered him the entire race. After the race, Ricciardo visited the Ferrari hospitality suite to apologise in person to Sainz for the contact.
Speaking on an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ricciardo said it was important for him to make sure there would be no hard feelings between the pair moving forward through the rest of the season.
“I hated every second of the apology!,” Ricciardo told host Trevor Noah. “I guess probably with experience, being in it for so long, I have the maturity, I guess, to know now how much we all put into it. And as competitive as we are, we all have something strongly in common.
“There’s only 20 of us who do it – there’s only 20 F1 drivers. You kind of just respect everyone’s journey. Like the incident – if I hold myself accountable, I feel like I want to just apologise. It’s nothing personal. I don’t think everyone would do it, but for me, I just felt better by doing it. So we kind of just clean the slate for the next one and I know that when we come alongside each other on track next, there’s no intensity. There’ll be an intensity, but nothing heightened, I guess.
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