“And apparently I’m an idiot. And it was my fault.
“So, that made my blood boil. Because it’s clear as day – and it’s also behind a safety car.
“The only thing you’ve got to do is watch the car in front, we can’t predict what the leader is going to do. We can’t assume that we’re going to go in turn 14. The race doesn’t start until the control line.
“I’m doing my best not to say what I want to say. But f— that guy – and I’m being nice still.
“But if that’s what he thinks, I’m like … yeah.”
Stroll finished 15th and said he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Someone braked at the front of the pack, I don’t know who, and then everyone stopped. The car in front of me just stopped from like 60kph to zero, and then boom, so it was really stupid. It’s one of those,” he told reporters.
“I got a penalty because of the end result that I hit Ricciardo but it’s not like everything was normal and I just ploughed into the back of him.
“It was a really odd concertina effect that I would have liked to see the stewards take into consideration maybe a little bit more.”
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After being told that Ricciardo thought Stroll was blaming him, Stroll said: “No, I don’t think it’s him. Everyone just slammed on the brakes, and he was the guy in front of me.
“I don’t think he slammed on the brakes [more than others], it was, like I said, the concertina effect.”
Ricciardo, who has yet to score in five races and has now retired in his last two, had hoped to seize some momentum in China after out-qualifying teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
The Australian, who started the season as a candidate to return to the main Red Bull team alongside triple champion Max Verstappen, is under some pressure after Tsunoda scored in Australia and Japan.
To add to Ricciardo’s unhappiness, stewards gave him two penalty points and a three-place grid drop for the next race in Miami after he overtook Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas under safety car conditions.
Reuters
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