Daniel Ricciardo admitted he couldn’t get to grips with the handling of McLaren’s Formula 1 car during his two seasons at the team.
He believes his former team mate Lando Norris sussed the car’s peculiarities better than he did. But Norris doubts that, saying that even after McLaren’s recent strides in performance the MCL60 remains a difficult car to drive.
Ricciardo made his return to F1 with AlphaTauri at last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. After qualifying he said he was able to drive with confidence again, something he struggled with at McLaren.
He qualified and finished 13th on his return, despite falling to the back of the field at the start after being hit by Zhou Guanyu. He was encouraged by his first race back in the AlphaTauri AT04, finding out “what the car likes” and learning “a lot”.
“That’s really the most encouraging thing,” Ricciardo told media including RaceFans afterwards. “I felt obviously for whatever reasons the McLaren was normally not speaking my language, and it certainly speaks Lando’s language.
“He certainly knows how to get the most out of that thing. But I felt like, especially last year, it [was] just bit of stalemate and it was really hard to get out of that.
“So that’s why the time off and then obviously a fresh now team and environment [has] obviously been probably the best thing for me. That’s all I can ask for is progress and I think being open to learn again. That’s important as well.”
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McLaren have shot up the F1 order recently with upgrades that has turned their MCL60 into a podium contender. The first upgrade was introduced at the Austrian Grand Prix where Norris delivered McLaren’s first top-five finish of 2023.
However even after the upgrade Norris continues to find the car’s handling a challenge. He said he was “almost crashing in every corner” and the performance was still limited by “the way you have to drive.”
The car’s tricky handling “is exactly the same, which is I guess kind of our next issue to tackle” added Norris in Austria.
In the two races since then, with further upgrades to his car, Norris has finished second twice. McLaren have “tried to improve some of the handling balance issues that we have,” he said after the Hungarian GP.
“We’ve improved the load side and the downforce and we’ve improved ever so slightly the handling and with both of them, we’ve had a good improvement in tyre degradation at the same time.”
The the upgrade which has delivered a significant step forward in performance, the McLaren remains far from an easy car to drive, says Norris.
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“The car still doesn’t handle anywhere like what I would want from a car. If you said what do you need from a perfect car, I feel like it’s really far away from what I want,” Norris admitted.
“But it’s head is a little bit in that direction, which is a good thing for me, it’s how I want to be able to drive and push the car. It has improved my confidence, I guess.
“We had a car which was inconsistent [and] I didn’t know even last year at times. Even last year when we looked good and I looked confident, there’s still plenty of times last year when I had no idea how to drive the car. I would come in and they would say ‘what’s the problem?’ From one lap to another it just changes and I don’t know how to improve and so on.
“Now I feel like it’s a slightly clearer direction that I need to be working in which is a good thing. I can just focus on more simple things with my driving and little things like this to help be here today.
“So it improved my confidence quite a bit. Not to the level that I still want but to go out and drive how I want and feel confident and just drive freely and not have to think about it too much. It makes a big difference.”
“For me the more I [need to] think the worse I do and now I have to think less which is a good thing.”
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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix
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