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Ricciardo relishes battle through the pack despite 'bruised tush'

Daniel Ricciardo says despite bruised bottom from an early off-track moment he was thrilled to carve his way from the back row on the grid to fifth place in the British Grand Prix.

The Australian driver had an eventful race weekend sparked by a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change, only to be compounded when his turbocharger gave up on him during Q1 of qualifying.

Having already been relegated to the back row of the grid, and only ahead of Fernando Alonso who took a raft of engine penalties, Red Bull opted to give Ricciardo a full engine change in order to 'pool' power unit parts with no further grid change coming from it.

With an exciting but challenging race ahead, Ricciardo completed a 19th to 5th place charge but did suffer an off-track moment when he was pushed wide by Romain Grosjean at Luffield during the opening laps.

After recovering from the off, Ricciardo reeled in the pack and was set-up for a closing lap duel with Nico Hulkenberg in the Renault for sixth place - only to be promoted to fifth after Sebastian Vettel's late tyre puncture.

Having produced an impressive damage limitation against his Formula 1 championship rivals, Ricciardo was beaming at the chequered flag and believed even without his back of the grid start fifth place was likely to be his maximum at Silverstone.

"One simply could not have been higher than one was," Ricciardo said. "I would suspect probably the floor had a bit of damage after that off, it was a bumpy. My tush got a little bit dirty... or bruised.

"I think in the end fifth was the maximum even without that, sure I would have finished a long way up in terms of race time but I think it wouldn't have got close to the other guys.

"It was a crazy race, we went through the race and that was fun and I just had to battle the whole time so I enjoyed it a lot."

Zdroj: crash.net