The Australian collided with Alex Albon at Turn 3 on the first lap of the race. The pair touched wheels, sending them both into the barrier and out of the race.
Ricciardo’s exit came after a slow start that saw both he and RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda lose ground from 10th and 11th on the grid.
By contrast, Albon started well and got good drive out of the second corner which saw the Williams driver find the same piece of road as the McLaren ahead.
“We definitely got gobbled up on that medium,” Ricciardo explained.
“That was weird because the cars in front of us look like they got off the line well – I guess [George] Russell, pretty sure everyone in front was on the medium, so it just looks like Yuki and I didn’t have the grip that we anticipated.
“As soon as we launched, I could see [Valtteri] Bottas and [Nico] Hulkenberg just split us and go around.
“Then into one, I was in the middle, I think with Yuki and an Alpine and then by Turn 2 I thought alright, let’s just settle, and I soon as I got on the throttle, I was still struggling.
“I think [Lance] Stroll was on my outside, so I was trying to hold him off and then I guess as I’ve started to come back for [Turn] 3, Albon’s there.”
Having exited Turn 2 in the middle of the track, Ricciardo eased his car back to the right on approach to Turn 3, to open the corner.
In doing so, he was unaware that behind him Albon was heading into the same piece of open road.
“I watched his on board,” Ricciardo recounted.
“I don’t even know if he wanted to be there, but his traction was so much better on the soft that he was like, well, there’s space, until there wasn’t.
“So I didn’t see him but honestly, I always assume maybe someone is there. It’s Lap 1, so I never tried to use the full width of the track and be completely ignorant. But yeah, I guess there was obviously not enough room.
“All things considered, if we could wind back the clock an hour, I would start on the soft,” he added.
“But for the record, I wanted to be on the medium [tyre]. That’s not something I fought against. But knowing what we know, now the soft would have been a lot a lot better for us.”
Albon was similarly pragmatic, acknowledging it was a racing incident and Ricciardo hadn’t seen the Williams as he moved across the track.
“Kind of surprised the grip I had out of [Turn] 2, and was able to crawl underneath him,” Albon recounted.
“Obviously just one of them things; he didn’t see me, clearly. I tried to back out of it last minute.
“There was a moment where I realised he hasn’t seen me here and the way he’s pulling across… It’s tricky.
“I hit the brakes and tried to get out of it but we’re almost too far alongside him that, as I backed out of it, but he was still coming across, and I couldn’t avoid this.
“It’s not what we want,” he added.
“It’s not secret that we are having a tough time with it at the moment with the parts we got. This is going to hurt us for sure.”
Albon added that, while it looked spectacular as the tyre wall collapsed around his car, the crash itself was not especially jarring.
“The impact itself was relatively low-speed,” he explained.
“But the way I hit the tyre wall, normally we have these kind of plastic barriers… But this was much more dug in and it really stops very violently.
“They’re the questions I’m worried about – not for me, for the car, because that’s where you can do damage.”
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