Why McLaren doesn’t doubt Ricciardo can escape his ‘dark’ place

Even Formula 1’s happiest and most smiley driver could not hide the scale of disappointment about his shock Q1 exit in the Portuguese Grand Prix.

Having felt that he had been on the verge of a breakthrough in his performance at Portimao, after an Imola event where he never felt fully on top of the car, it all came crashing down heavily in qualifying last weekend for Daniel Ricciardo. At a loss to explain why he could not pull any pace as he wound up 16th on the grid, the new McLaren signing told TV reporters straight after he got out of the car: “To be standing here now, it's pretty dark.”

What has perhaps made Ricciardo’s struggles so surprising is that the McLaren car is so strong in the hands of team-mate Lando Norris. The young Briton has had a stellar start to the campaign and is currently third in the drivers’ standings – ahead of a Mercedes and a Red Bull driver who on paper have quicker cars underneath them.

PLUS: How in-form Norris is staking his claim as Britain's next F1 champion 

But while these are not easy times for Ricciardo, one thing is patently clear: This situation is viewed by the team very much as a temporary glitch, rather than the trigger for alarm bells to ring about whether or not the right man was chosen to replace Carlos Sainz Jr.

This isn’t a question of F1’s paddock vultures circling and McLaren casting eyes elsewhere to see if someone else can do a better job. Instead, the team knows that Ricciardo has what’s needed to turn things around and do exactly what they want him to. It’s small details, which can be sorted quickly, that are playing themselves in a fairly dramatic way.

As team boss Andreas Seidl says: “Of course he's the one who is probably disappointed the most, because he knows he has it in him. And he's disappointed that he can't extract the performance of our car yet.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

“But at the same time, he's very experienced. I think we are also very experienced on the team side. It's simply important to stay calm, work through this integration or adaptation process together as a team. I think he feels very comfortable and happy in the team.

“I think he's also very happy with how together we deal with this current challenge, together. And I'm 100% sure it is just a matter of more time and then we will see Daniel back to the performance that we all know.”

So why have things been so difficult for Ricciardo? There is no single answer to the situation, but there is definitely a combination of factors that have come together to hurt him.

First of all, 2021 has proved to be a year where those drivers who have switched teams have been on the backfoot more than they would in previous seasons. The effective carryover of 2020 cars has meant that those staying on have started from a higher baseline of knowledge when it comes to understanding the finer details of their machines.

"I think probably there's a period in the kind of entry phase where the car is on a knife edge. I think Lando is certainly able to, let's say, drive around that better than me at the moment" Daniel Ricciardo

The adaptation process for the new boys has also been made much trickier by such limited pre-season testing. With a driver like Ricciardo getting just one-and-half days of running before the first race of the season, the lack of mileage has been a huge hindrance.

Ricciardo is also being hurt by having a driving style that is actually counter-intuitive to going quickly at places like Imola and Portimao where grip levels are low. His strength under braking is obvious for all to see, thanks to his brilliance at overtaking, and he’s had the knack in the past of making up lap time by grabbing more speed on the entry and then coping brilliantly to collect everything to the apex.

But when track grip levels drop, and he has a lack of confidence in what the car and tyres are going to do, then trying to go in to a corner quicker simply results in lock ups, the car sliding, him scrubbing off speed and lap time bleeding away. As Seidl says: “I think it just snowballs into more lap time deficit when you don't feel that comfortable with pushing to the limit, and that's the reason why.”

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Ricciardo himself has talked about the MCL35M feeling like it is on a ‘knife-edge’ in the corner entry phase, and the team is struggling to give him a set-up that gets rid of that feeling for now.

“It's a bit of locking, and sometimes it's losing the rear,” he says. “But there's a fine line, I guess.

“I think probably there's a period in the kind of entry phase where the car is on a knife edge. And I feel like there's probably a set-up solution where I can just open that and not be on such a knife's edge, because it is really sensitive.

“I think Lando is certainly able to, let's say, drive around that better than me at the moment. And probably to fast track my learning, I can just try something with the set-up that opens our window, and it's probably with the suspension or something like that."

Ricciardo’s fighting drive back through the field at Portimao in Sunday’s race, finishing ninth, certainly showed he’s not lost at sea with the car. That he and McLaren understand where the problems lay, even if the cure is not an immediate one, means at least matters can be addressed.

McLaren also knows that problems with a lack of confidence are often exaggerated in qualifying – when drivers need to be much more at the limit and are required to have that blind faith in what the car is going to do. Don’t forget that in 2021 qualifying, the margins between success and failure are so small - just one tenth of a second more would have put Ricciardo through to Q2, and the picture could have looked totally different if he had hooked things up then.

There’s little doubt, though, that while there remains work to do for Ricciardo and McLaren in tweaking the car’s mechanicals and set-up to help him more, going to a high grip, high downforce track like Barcelona this weekend could not come at a more crucial time. It gives him the scope to lift that confidence just a little bit more.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“The feeling is nice when you've got all that load and that grip and downforce and I guess that's what F1 cars do best,” he smiles. “They do feel like a little, and it's a very childish word, but like a bit yucky when they are kind of sliding and snapping and it does make it unpredictable.

“On one side it's a challenge and it feels good if you execute it. But yeah, I do like that peak of grip and that kind of ripping your neck off G-force kind of feeling. I prefer that in general.”

Never has Ricciardo been more looking forward to Turn 3 at Barcelona, with sticky tyres and a high-grip surface that will better allow him to show what he can really do in that McLaren.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images