Stroll and Ricciardo collided at the restart of the race in China. The two riders exchanged opinions through the media but did not discuss the matter in person.
Stroll crashed into Ricciardo before the restart of the race in China, ending a promising weekend for him. He received a penalty for it, but paradoxically, the Australian ended up worse. While Stroll’s penalty had no major impact, Ricciardo overtook Hülkenberg under the safety car before his retirement because he thought he could, dropping three places at the start of the race in Miami.
Ricciardo confirmed in Miami on Thursday that he had not cleared the situation with Stroll and suggested there was no point in taking it up with him if he continued to think he had done nothing wrong.
“I would say no because I feel it’s not going anywhere,” Ricciardo told Motorsport.com when asked if he wanted to talk to Stroll.
“I can accept the apology, I’m not such a jerk… but that didn’t come either. He obviously doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, so there’s probably not much to talk about.’
“Of course if we’re sitting next to each other at a riders meeting and he wants to talk, I’m not going to ignore him or anything.”
“When I was younger, maybe I was more stubborn, I didn’t always apologize for something that was my fault,” Ricciardo said. “But the last couple of years, if I get someone out, or even if it’s 50-50, I still say, ‘Look, maybe I could have done better, so I’m sorry to spoil our day.’ I’ll just write to them to clear the air a bit.’
“We’re all rivals, but you don’t want to be a target and you don’t need enemies. I’m not going so far as to say he’s an enemy or anything. It’s an incident and we’ll move on. But you don’t want what you do to others to happen to you. I’d tell him, ‘Hey man, sorry, I was looking away,’ or ‘You hit the brakes too early and surprised me.’
Lance Stroll dodged questions about the Miami incident, saying when asked if he was trying to reach out to Ricciardo: “Not here. These things are done behind closed doors.’
