Second placed finisher Fernando Alonso (ESP) Ferrari drinks champagne On the podium. Formula One World Championship, Rd11, Hungarian Grand Prix, Race Day, Hungaroring, Hungary. Sunday, 27 July 2014 © Sutton Images. No reproduction without permission
And just like in Canada, where he scored his first win, the Australian made the race-winning pass with three laps to go.
Ricciardo won from sixth on the grid in Montreal and from fourth on the grid in Budapest and thus becomes just the ninth man in F1 history to win his first two Grands Prix from outside the top three grid positions. The last driver to do what the 25-year-old has done was Kimi Raikkonen, who won his first race (Malaysia, 2003) from seventh on the grid and his second (Belgium, 2004) from tenth.
Ricciardo, who remains the only non-Mercedes driver to stand on the top step of the podium this season, heads into the four-week summer break with a 43-point advantage over his four-time world champion team mate Sebastian Vettel in the drivers’ standings - and not many people would have predicted that before the season began.
Behind the victorious Red Bull, Fernando Alonso took his second podium finish of the season at the circuit on which he scored his very first win back in 2003. The Spaniard, who extended Ferrari’s run of points-scoring races to 78, is just the third man this season - after Riccardo and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas - to finish ahead of one or both of the Mercedes when neither silver car has retired.
Alonso has now achieved 97 podium finishes in Formula One racing and is just three rostrum results away from joining Michael Schumacher and Alain Prost in an exclusive club of drivers who have achieved 100 or more top-three finishes.
What’s more, Kimi Raikkonen’s sixth place - and the eight points that came with it - helped Ferrari to re-take third position in the constructors’ standings from Williams, who managed a points haul of just 14 in Hungary, compared to the Scuderia’s 26.
Elsewhere, for a while it looked like Lewis Hamilton might become the first driver in history to win a race after starting from the pit lane, but in the end the Mercedes driver had to settle for a still impressive P3, just ahead of team mate Nico Rosberg. In fact, it was the first time this season that Rosberg has reached the chequered flag and not finished on the podium.
Rosberg remains on course for his first world drivers’ championship, but his lead is now down to 11 points over Hamilton. Incidentally, all five current world champions on the grid - Hamilton, Raikkonen, Alonso, Vettel and McLaren’s Jenson Button - finished in the points in Hungary, and that’s the first time that has happened this season.
In other news, race-ending crashes for Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez handed Force India their first double retirement since last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix, 28 races ago. Hulkenberg’s crash also leaves Alonso as the only driver to have scored points at every race this season.
And finally, Sauber are still without a point in 2014 - but only just. Adrian Sutil finished 11th, just 0.8s behind Jenson Button...