“New doesn’t always mean better” – Daniel Ricciardo cautiously optimistic of the 2022 season

Daniel Ricciardo is cautiously optimistic about the 2022 season when F1 is set to introduce new cars designed to improve wheel-to-wheel racing. The Australian feels that although the new regulations are “exciting”, they may yet fail to achieve the intended results.

Speaking in a post-season interview with Auto Motor und Sport, the McLaren driver said:

“A new regulation is always exciting. But again, you don’t want to just think that it’s guaranteed to make things better. New doesn’t always mean better. But from a racing perspective, when the field gets closer together, that would appeal to me. I enjoy wheel-to-wheel duels, and I want to show my skills there. Maybe that’ll be an advantage for me if it’s actually going to be closer. I would welcome that.”

The 2022 regulations are touted to be the biggest “formula” overhaul in F1 history. Deliberately crafted to force teams to develop cars that are easier to follow at high speeds, the new rules are expected to make racing closer and more exciting.

Speaking in a recent video, Mercedes technical chief James Allison revealed that the new regulations “touch almost every aspect” of the car’s design and force teams to discard most of their knowledge from previous seasons. This essentially means the new season could produce some surprises, such as a mid-field team suddenly finding itself on the front grid, or the other way round.

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Daniel Ricciardo reveals his struggles with the MCL35M arose from issues the team was dealing with for years

Daniel Ricciardo has revealed that some of the limitations on the MCL35M didn’t allow him to drive the car, and “attack the corners” in the way he wanted. While he struggled to overcome the limitations, Ricciardo says that he wasn’t the first person to report them to the team.

Speaking in the aforementioned interview, the Honey Badger, as Ricciardo is nicknamed, said:

“I’m not the first driver on the team to report the limitations with the car that I felt. I’m not saying that some of that is in the DNA of the car, because a car changes over time. But from what I understand, McLaren has been dealing with it for quite some time.”

The MCL35M is an evolution of the team’s 2020 challenger the MCL35, which in turn is a minor step up from McLaren’s 2019 car. The team’s technical director James Key, who took up responsibilities in 2019, has therefore had very little input in terms of the car’s overall design.

The team is essentially using the same base chassis, originally designed between 2017-18, under the input of two-world champion Fernando Alonso. Key has previously admitted that the team’s recent cars still share a lot of traits that were originally designed to suit Alonso’s “physical” driving style.

Lando Norris, who’s been with the team since 2017 in various roles, has learned to adapt his driving style to the car’s demands. Daniel Ricciardo, however, in only his first year with the team, struggled to extract the car’s potential.