No Stroll in the park for Daniel Ricciardo

He was running 10^th at Formula 1's visit to China when a restart saw Canadian Lance Stroll hammer the nose of his car under the Aussie's rear tyres.

Ricciardo is racing for the renamed RB Red Bull development team, which was meant to be a testing ground for the Aussie to put 'Checo' Perez out of the seat and reinstate Ricciardo as the number two driver to Max Verstappen in the most dominant F1 car on the grid.

However, he's had a rough start to the season missing out on points in each of the three opening rounds.

But he had out-qualified his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda for the first time this season, he had out-driven his team mate in the sprint race on Saturday.

And he was about five places ahead of his team-mate on Sunday and battling for precious points when Stroll took him out of contention.

"I could see everyone started to break for (turn) 14, it was starting to bunch, so I started slowing more and closing in on Oscar, I felt Lance underneath me basically."

On hearing that the son of billionaire team-owner Stroll had even blamed Ricciardo, the rage was palpable.

"I was starting to calm down but that pisses me off, I watched his on board, as soon as we started to break he's looking at the corner ... there's no point looking three cars ahead."

There's seemingly little time left for Ricciardo to make a comeback, but oddly Stroll's team-mate is showing that veterans can still run with the best after Fernando Alonso was pushing for second early in the piece.

Alonso has two world championships to his name though, while Ricciardo's star power is in his charm and popularity, I think he'll need to start getting top seven or eight finishes to keep his career alive.

I hope he does though, he's the best character on the grid.

Jacob McMaster, Editor