Australian Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo has given an insight into the “constructive criticism” he’s received from McLaren engineers during his dire first season with the team – as well as an abrupt demand.
Throughout the opening 20 rounds of the 22-race world championship, in which Ricciardo managed just 105 points to be sitting in eighth, the 32-year-old revealed he had been told to “pull your finger out”.
While McLaren teammate Lando Norris‘ performances have declined over the second half of the world championship, the Briton was superb over the 11 rounds ahead of the summer break, registering three podium finishes and nine top-10 placings.
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On the contrary, Ricciardo mustered zero podium finishes in that period and only one top-five placing.
Ricciardo broke through for his first victory since 2018 when he executed a sublime performance at Monza on September 12, but the former Red Bull and Renault driver has struggled since.
“The support of (race engineer Tom Stallard), and really the whole team, was good; they were very understanding and patient, for sure,” Ricciardo told GP Racing.
“But yeah, there was also at times a kind of ‘pull your finger out’, and I’m big enough to take constructive criticism. There were no insults or beating me down; it was always trying to understand, ‘OK, what’s the issue, and then how can we help you?’. That was a more modern approach to take and it’s served us well.”
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Long and medium-speed corners have posed the greatest challenge for Ricciardo during his first of three seasons with McLaren.
He’s had difficulty combining braking with turning in on long and medium-speed corners, which is costing him about half a 10th of a second.
“The natural picture in my head was that every lap I do in this car, I’d just get better,” Ricciardo said of the MCL35.
“In Bahrain I qualified sixth and I knew I still wasn’t close to 100 per cent comfortable. So in my head I was like, ‘Well, each time I drive now I’ll just push the car more and more’.
“And then I, let’s say, hit an early plateau where the limit was a different limit to what I was used to. And to arrive at that limit, I needed to drive the car quite differently.
“The car has some really strong points but also some weak points, and I was just trying to navigate my way to the strong points. It didn’t always come natural for me.
“The key was trying to break it down and understand it corner by corner because, as a whole, there were times when I was seven or eight 10ths away (from Norris) and I was like, ‘I can’t do that. I don’t know where that time is’.”
It must be noted that Norris first competed with McLaren in Formula 1 in 2019 and that his time at the England-based team stretches back to 2016.
He joined McLaren in 2016 and, after being crowned the youngest FIA Formula 3 European champion in 2017, was announced as McLaren’s official test and reserve driver for 2018.
“Even with me and Max (Verstappen), a really strong and competitive rivalry, I remember I was furious if he was two 10ths faster than me,” Ricciardo said.
“We all know the calibre of driver Max is. So – and I’m not taking anything away from Lando – a gap that big is like foreign territory, really. I’ve never found myself in that position.
“It wasn’t like I made a mistake here or there, it was that I didn’t know where that chunk of time was. Tom was good at bringing it back and saying, ‘Look, let’s analyse, let’s go through this corner. Why can’t you do that? What’s stopping you? Let’s figure it out, let’s go from A to B to C, as opposed to just going straight from A to F’.
“Race car drivers or athletes – we are a certain amount of stubborn. But you can’t take that to your grave, if you know what I mean.”