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Daniel Ricciardo has visibly had a tough time since moving to McLaren back in 2021, having been consistently outperformed by his teammate Lando Norris. Team boss Andreas Seidl, however, recently revealed that the Woking-based squad has not given up on the Australian.
Seidl claimed that McLaren is doing everything possible to get Ricciardo to become comfortable with the car and perform at a level where he can extract every ounce of performance from the MCL36. He said:
“In general, Daniel [Ricciardo] says it himself, he still doesn’t feel 100 per cent with the car, especially when it’s about pushing it to the absolute limit in qualifying. He’s up against a very strong team-mate as well, with Lando [Norris], and if you put both things together, that’s the gap we are sometimes seeing. Barcelona, in the race, it was simply not possible for Daniel to do a better pace [than 12th]. That’s something we had to analyse after the race, which we did. We found an issue on the car which gave us an explanation, which was important, then we learned from that. All we can do, together with Daniel, with a commitment on both sides, is to simply keep working hard in order to find these last percentages.”
Although Daniel Ricciardo's contract with McLaren stands until 2023, his place in the team is increasingly being questioned.
"Just wasn’t a good weekend" - Daniel Ricciardo reflects on the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix
Daniel Ricciardo, who took a glorious win at the Monaco Grand Prix with Red Bull back in 2018, had a disappointing Sunday at the iconic track last weekend.
At the post-race TV pen conference, the Aussie reflected on the weekend, emphasizing that he is now learning to deal with such devastating weekends better with experience. Ricciardo said:
“Certainly tricky. I mean, these conditions, it’s not often you drive in Monaco in the wet, and the wet is already a handful, let alone on the tightest street circuit. We got to a point where we were slow on the extreme [wet tyre], but to fit an inter for a few laps I thought I would have just lost more time, so tried to ride it out so I could just put a slick on. Ultimately this weekend just wasn’t a good weekend, just not really quick throughout and that was the race. Obviously we know Monaco is so track position dependent and yeah, just obviously a tough weekend to take. Unfortunately, I’m experienced with these, had a few of them the last 12 months, so I feel like I can handle them a little bit better. Therefore I will continue to smile or at least try to smile.”
Daniel Ricciardo secured thirteenth place in the race, making it the fifth Grand Prix of the season where the McLaren driver failed to score a point.
