Ricciardo struggled for form at the start of the 2021 season after joining McLaren in the winter, scoring less than half as many points as his teammate Lando Norris.
Ricciardo retired in Q2 at the Red Bull Ring last weekend before dropping to 13th place in the race due to a drive failure, marking a disappointing weekend.
The hopes of turning luck on the track for the second weekend didn’t seem much brighter on Friday when he finished 12th in FP1 and 15th in FP2.
But Ricciardo said the car “didn’t feel that bad” during Friday’s race and while he was surprised to be so far down the line he didn’t think a big change in approach was needed.
“I’m a bit surprised by the rating,” said Ricciardo. “We’re just missing a bit, but nothing feels out of place in the car, as I suspect it’s probably a little everywhere. I know there aren’t many corners here, but maybe we’re only half a tenth missing everywhere, then that adds up to half a second or so, and we need that.
Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“It’s probably just fine-tuning tonight. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel. I think like with my driving and the points I missed last week and areas I missed, I think I definitely made a good step today.
“So we’re just trying to do another tomorrow and we’ll be in a decent place.”
Ricciardo has tried to adapt his driving style to the McLaren MCL35M car after finishing after a difficult start to the year in which he finished a race no higher than sixth.
“I’m still trying to maximize the driving style that the car currently likes,” he said. “I tried to work on that. We come there.
“I think today was definitely a step forward, we changed a few things on the car to give me that feeling. That was positive.
“We actually looked pretty good last Friday. So if you look at the ratings from last week through this week, you will think we are a long way off. Then Saturday obviously changed completely.
“I am confident that we can move forward tomorrow instead of staying here or withdrawing. So I probably feel a little better today, but we’re obviously not there on the timesheets.
“So yeah, I’m not going to panic. A little tweaking and I think we’ll find what we need tomorrow. “
Norris led McLaren’s efforts in Austria last weekend as he qualified third and finished fifth after making his 2020 track break on the F1 podium.
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Norris said he had a “good feeling” about the McLaren car after Friday’s race, but he felt there was more to come after a varied day of running.
“We didn’t put it all together, we just tested a lot of different things,” said Norris. “Tonight we will do our analysis and we will hopefully come back tomorrow with a better package.
“I think it’s going to be a more interesting race than last weekend, it’s harder to watch the tires, to know when to push and when not to push and so on.
“Hopefully it’s okay with us and we’ll make sure we do a good job.”
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