Ricciardo suffers blow, but admits: 'Prepared myself for that'

Sergio Perez’s future was all but certain following the Belgian Grand Prix. Ricciardo himself was not overly confident of a promotion to Red Bull, he admitted. "I didn't rule it out, for sure. I don't want to say, 'oh no, I never thought that'. I thought maybe something could happen, but I also didn't expect it or kind of get my hopes up. I was aware maybe something changes, but let's just do what I'm doing and if I get a call, I get a call."

He continued: "So that was that. So obviously I didn't get a call, but also that was probably where I mentally kind of prepared myself more than, oh, this is it now. This is going to happen. So pretty unchanged,” the Australian reacted to GPBlog and others.

However, Ricciardo also pointed out that even as he did not get promoted, he remained in contact with the team regarding different matters. "I didn't receive the call to be like, 'Hey, what's up? You're changing'. But no, of course I still speak. Obviously that week after Spa, it was still not shut down. So we were still able to work and I had a filming day. So I also spoke to the team after that."

Ricciardo hopes to continue to perform

After a rocky start to the year, Ricciardo managed to get closer to Yuki Tsunoda in overall performance. "It's clear that since Montreal, I've done more of what was probably expected of me results wise. So it's just very much keep doing that. Keep performing at the level we know you can and things will work itself out. Performance is everything. Obviously I got to keep on it myself and that helps my chances of obviously staying on the grid," the eight-time Grand Prix winner concluded.