Daniel Ricciardo blamed damage to his AlphaTauri car for his "pretty miserable" return to Formula 1 action.
The Aussie was sidelined for almost two months after breaking his hand at Zandvoort in August. And the United States Grand Prix marked his long-awaited return to racing, in a city and at a track he loves.
But he was left with the Austin blues after tumbling down the order mid-way through the race. In the end, the team gave up on a failed one-stop strategy and put him on soft tyres at the end, which improved his pace but condemned him to finishing last.
"We were just limited with damage, unfortunately," he explained after the race. "We picked up some damage very shortly after the hard [tyre] because we lost a lot of pace very quickly.
"I told the team, 'Sorry guys, I've got nothing right now. I really can't do anything'. They said that it looked like we've lost something, and then they said, 'Yeah, there's damage to somewhere on the front of the car'. I guess it was debris.
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"They mentioned [Lance] Stroll. I think we got close, but I don't think we touched, so I think we must have picked up some debris somewhere, and that made our race a pretty miserable one. I won't lie, we're at best a top-10 car but when you add damage into it, we are certainly out of the points."
While Ricciardo struggled, team-mate Yuki Tsunoda enjoyed an excellent race. Having qualified 11th, the Japanese racer was in points contention throughout the Grand Prix and crossed the line 10th to make sure AlphaTauri didn't go home empty-handed. And he was later bumped up to eighth – his best result of the season – when Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified.
Not only did Tsunoda finish in the points, but he even had enough of a gap to those behind to pit on the penultimate lap to tee up a shot at setting the fastest lap of the race. He said he "got a heart attack" because he thought he was being pitted due to a problem on his car, but soon refocused and succeeded in securing the extra point – doubling the team's entire tally for the season in one afternoon.
Ricciardo refused to place any blame on his hand, though he hinted it was still not completely back to normal just yet. "I felt probably worse yesterday (after the sprint) than today – I say worse but I was obviously still okay," explained the Aussie.
"But I felt like I got out of the car probably sweating more, so maybe that was just a good little warm-up for me. There are positives. The hand is no excuse, that was good, and we did well with the timing of the return, to kind of have no hesitations or excuses. Physically, it's definitely a tough race and I still felt okay."
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