Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo has spoken about his relationship with McLaren engineers and described the “constructive criticism” he has received during a chaotic premier season with the British team.
After a two-year stint at Renault, the Australian signed a multi-year deal with McLaren ahead of the 2021 championship.
Ricciardo worked with British young gun Lando Norris, who repeatedly outperformed his teammate in the first half of the season.
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Norris had taken several podiums prior to the midseason, while Ricciardo had not yet made it into the top three when the drivers went on vacation in August.
The 32-year-old bounced back in September when he won the Italian Grand Prix – McLaren’s first F1 win in nine years.
But Ricciardo’s suffering continued after the Monza triumph, with McLaren falling behind Ferrari in the constructors’ championship as the season drew to a close.
Ricciardo is currently eighth in the drivers’ standings with 105 points, well below fifth-placed Norris with 153 points.
“The support from (race engineer Tom Stallard) and really the whole team was good – they were definitely very understanding and patient,” Ricciardo told GP Racing.
“But yeah, there was a kind of ‘pull your finger’ sometimes, and I’m tall enough to accept constructive criticism – there was no abuse or beating, there was always an attempt to understand, ‘Okay what? the problem, and then how can we help you? ‘ That was a more modern approach and served us well. “
Daniel Ricciardo is currently eighth in the drivers’ standings with 105 points. Photo by Clive Mason / Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
Ricciardo’s main reason for his frustration with the MCL35M was the braking system, which forced him to change his driving style, a change the Australian couldn’t take for granted.
“The natural image in my head was that I just got better with every lap that I drive in this car,” explained Ricciardo.
“I qualified sixth in Bahrain and knew that I still didn’t feel 100 percent comfortable. So in my head I thought, ‘Well, every time I drive now, I’ll just keep pushing the car more and more’.
“And then, shall we say, I reached an early plateau where the limit was a different limit than I was used to. And to reach that limit, I had to drive the car very differently.
“The car has some really strong points, but also some weaknesses, and I was just trying to navigate to the strengths. It wasn’t always a matter of course for me.
“The key was to break it down and understand corner by corner because overall I was sometimes seven or eight tenths away (from Norris) thinking, ‘I can’t. I don’t know where this time is’.
Daniel Ricciardo from Australia and McLaren. Photo by Andrej Isakovic – Pool / Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
“Even with me and Max (Verstappen), a really strong and competitive rivalry, I was angry when he was two tenths faster than me. We all know the caliber of Driver Max. So – and I’m not taking anything away from Lando – such a large gap is really like foreign territory. I’ve never been in this position before.
“It wasn’t that I made a mistake here or there, but that I didn’t know where this period was. Tom was good at bringing it back and saying, ‘Look, let’s analyze, let’s go through this corner – why can’t you do this what’s stopping you? Let’s find out, let’s go from A to B to C instead of just going straight from A to F.
“Racing drivers or athletes, we are a certain stubbornness. But you can’t take that to the grave with you if you understand what I’m talking about.
“At some point you have to be open-minded and say, ‘All right, that’s how it is. I have to adjust now, and I may not feel comfortable with it at first, but encourage me that the more I learn and get used to it, the better I will be. “
The F1 season continues next weekend with the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix scheduled to begin on Monday, December 6th at 4:30 p.m. AEDT.
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