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Daniel Ricciardo says he was lucky to finish the Singapore Grand Prix after suffering from power issues for the majority of the race at the Marina Bay circuit.
The Western Australian was hamstrung by an intermittent battery malfunction from the start of the grand prix which later threatened to end his race altogether.
Luckily his Red Bull held together to see him record his seventh podium of the season in third, finishing behind his team-mate Sebastian Vettel and eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton.
Ricciardo admitted he was glad to see the chequered flag having feared the issue would have seen him retire from the race.
Although frustrated at being unable to challenge Vettel for second in the closing stages due to a lack of power, the three-time winner hopes his Red Bull squad will prevent a re-occurrence of the problem before the Japanese Grand Prix.
“Normally, if we have these glitches, after a couple of laps, we clear it, but this one pretty much carried through all the way, so I’m a bit frustrated,” said Ricciardo.
“We had quite a bit going on – power was coming and going and, pretty much from the safety car onwards, it was consistently down on power.
“I was concerned we wouldn’t get all the way through to the flag but, luckily, it held on and hopefully we’ll fix it for Japan.
“It was nice to get on the back of Seb and put him under a bit of pressure, but it was ‘follow the leader’ and not much else we could do.
“Coming up through the gears, it would get a little power and then drop and come again, so we definitely had a few issues.
“We tried fixing them but, to be honest, we didn’t quite clear them all up. We’ll have to look into that and see how much it cost us.”
Ricciardo remains third in the championship standings just 60 points adrift of new points leader Hamilton.
